What Is Your Morning Routine When Mourning?

"We all have our routines. But they must have a purpose and provide an outcome that we can see and take some comfort from, or else they have no use at all." John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things

Is your first thought when awakening a negative one or is it a goal-oriented one? This is a crucial question to ponder since over time it defines the course of your grief work and whether you will add unnecessary suffering to legitimate suffering. Where you place your focus at the beginning of the day lays the groundwork for how you deal with the rest of it. In short, you have the freedom to decide whether you will be loss oriented or restoration oriented for that particular day and for the rest of your life. Yes, this is repetitious work but it is work that can evolve into an all-important habit.

Look at it this way: be self-compassionate. Be kind and nonjudgmental to yourself. How you treat yourself as you grieve can be the difference in focusing energy on the task at hand (adapting to and accepting the death of your loved one) or dissipating needed energy through the stress of negative thoughts. What you think and allow to roam in your thoughts is roaming through every cell in your body. You can change the direction of your thoughts and the ability to take action to heal. Changing thoughts changes feelings. It all depends on you and your choices. You are what you think.

Here's a few ways to start your morning in a proactive way and learn to eliminate simply reacting to whatever the day brings or whatever pops into your mind. Run your brain. Don't allow it to run you.

1. Think of a meaningful connection to a good friend, a place or a thing. It could be the great way someone has helped you. Examine what they did and how you might replicate it in whole or in part. Or think of a beautiful scene and examine it in detail, every tree, path, and surrounding terrain. Brighten that picture to make it stand out in your mind. Or start the day with a prayer or a favorite saying like, "The determining factor in life is not ability but what you think you can do." I know a man, who on rising, drops to his knees and says one sentence: "Thank you for the light." Remember, connections heal. We all need them.

2. Express gratitude for something good that happened the previous day. Think of the good things that happened: a relative came to comfort you, you received a call from a special friend, or you found the energy to do all that had to be done. Give thanks for your breath, your car, your home, or a good choice that you made. If you finally had a decent night's sleep, give thanks. Developing the gratitude habit will have a major impact on the quality of your inner life and your ability to cope well.

3. Decide if you are meeting your goals for adapting to your great loss. Do you have a plan? Here are three questions developed by the great counselor and psychologist Catherine Saunders that can be a good start in forming a plan and vowing to follow it each morning as you arise. (1) What do you want to take from your old life into your new life? (2) What do you need to leave behind? And the big one, (3) What do you need to add? Take them one at a time. Make lists as reminders and focus on the one you need to work on today. Examine the positive things you have already accomplished and where you will get started to pick up where you left off.

Getting into the action of starting off the day on a positive note will help your body as well as your mind. And there is nothing wrong with focusing on your body and saying, "I am strong" or "I am determined to make the best I can of this day." Your inner life is the key to the changes that have to be made and the new routines that must be created. Give yourself a pat on the back as you make progress. And you will progress. You can do this. You possess the wisdom and power within. Practice! Practice! Practice!

Dr. LaGrand is a grief counselor and the author of eight books, the most recent, Healing Grief, Finding Peace: 101 Ways to Cope with the Death of Your Loved One. He is known world-wide for his research on the Extraordinary Experiences of the bereaved (after-death communication phenomena) and was the founding President of Hospice & Palliative Care of the St. Lawrence Valley, Inc. His monthly ezine-free website is http://www.extraordinarygriefexperiences.com.