0:00Episode 3933, how grief affects your mindset. Moms, it's time to rediscover, rejuvenate, and renew whom you are in mind, body, and spirit. Welcome to Create Your Now, Your Best Selfie, the show that help you do just that. Here's your host, Certified Life Coach, Personal Trainer, and Nutritionist, Kristian Wardo. Happy every day, I hope you're ready for an incredible week, because yes, you've got to make a decision to rise up, to go out and be who God has created you to be, because if you're not, you're just going to say stuck. And that means, if you're not doing well, how does grief affect your mindset? For those of you who are brand-new to Create Your Now, welcome to The So Gotable Family. I'm so delighted of your presence. If you already even had the opportunity, you want to head on over to CreatureNow.com, where you can learn more and sign up for the Kisses newsletter. We keep it simple strategy, everyday solutions, to live, love, and impact, where this episode is brought to you by AIM, Inspiring Connection, and Community.

1:03You know, today we're going to be talking about something that may strike you as strange as we are coming out of the brand-new year, right? It's awesome, it's here, you celebrated it, you set your resolutions, and now it's the first full week. And now all of a sudden you're like, but where did everything go? Something's missing. So today I wanted to talk a little bit, and on a serious note, honestly, about grief. You see, grief isn't just about losing a loved one. Yes, it involves the loss of someone that you care for deeply. But it's a full-body mind-consuming response to any meaningful loss. There might be your job, a home, a relationship, like your marriage, a dream, gone sideways. If you don't understand how grief rewires your mindset, it can trap you in a mental box where all you see is what's broken, and how far you are climbing from out of that dark

2:04hole. Yet at the same time when you understand how grief affects your mindset, you get why you're paralyzed. You understand why you're stuck replaying the what, why, and how, over, and over, and over again, missing the possibility of what's next. So let's get real. Because you know, here at Creature Now, I come to you daily, right? And maybe you're just finding me this new year. Welcome. And I genuinely mean it. Welcome to the family. You're an extension of our family. And it's exciting because 2026, I believe, is going to be something spectacular. Now, that's spectacular as yet to be defined. And I'm not talking just about Creature Now, I'm talking about within your life. I'm not saying that everything's going to go perfect because I do know one thing grief is going to show up in your life. It is. And grief is brutal, right? It's just orienting and it's exhausting. Science and psychology confirm that grief triggers massive shifts in our brain, chemistry,

3:08cognitive patterns, clotting our judgment, zapping motivation, and amplifying negative thinking. No wonder you keep going down the road of like, man, I'm just not good enough. And you keep playing that over and over in your head because that's where you're stuck. Studies show the mind under grief can experience heightened anxiety, having that trouble focusing in a pervasive sense of hopelessness. That's why grief can feel like a cage at hijack instrumental resources, making it nearly impossible to envision a future beyond the loss. All you see is what you see now. All you feel is what you feel now. You can't see beyond that. You see there's a catch. Grief is a process, not a permanent state. The depth of the pain doesn't have to define how far you fall or how long you stay down. You can honor the grieving process without letting it swallow you whole.

4:08But the key is learning how grief shapes your mindset and taking those actionable steps to prevent it from overruling your entire life because that's where we end up. It's the grief couch. It sucks you in because you got your bottom imprint there and it's like, okay, I feel good here. And then it begins to mess with your mindset. What does that look like in real life when it starts messing with what you think? Number one, narrowed focus on loss. Your brain gets stuck zooming in on the loss and what you can't change. This television blocks out new opportunities and solutions. All you see is what, the negative? If you're only wearing negative glasses on me and how fun is that? It's not fun at all. Another way grief messes with your mindset is it slowed cognitive processing. It slows it down.

5:09The emotional weight, the structure, brains, executive function, making decision-making and problem-solving feel overwhelming. Have you ever felt that over one of like, I just can't catch my breath and I'm not talking about hyperventilating. I'm talking about just like, you just don't know what's next. There's just so much coming at you. And the feelings within you can't change. Grief also messes with your mind when it comes to heightened negative bias. Your brain goes into a threat mode, causing you to focus on risks and downsides rather than potential gains. You're in the fight, fight, fight, fight mode. Sometimes you gotta be there. Sometimes you can't stay there long. It also is a reflection of the erosion of motivation, feeling depleted and sad, drains your energy to take action or even chase goals.

6:12People who are having problems with grief can very easily go down the road and lead you to what depression. And that's why you've got to watch it. You need to honor it, but you've got to watch it. If you hang up there too long on that grief couch, it's not a good idea. And also another way that it messes with your mindset is this disturbed sense of identity. When dreams or roles disappear, you can stumble into an identity crisis, unsure of who you are or what you want moving forward. You're walking around kind of confesals like, I don't know what this is. You know what it is, but you don't know what it is. You don't have that clarity. You're wandering around in a fog that can't see the forest through the trees or the trees through the forest. It's called a mess is what it is. Losing a job, a relationship, if you get a divorce, maybe you break it off with your

7:16sweetheart, if you're just dating, maybe it's losing a home. If you had to sell your home or move abruptly for whatever reason, it can trigger grief just like losing a person. And we forget about this part of our life. And this happens more often than it does losing a person. And these losses are wrapped in shattered security, unstable plans, broken trust. Your mind cries out, but often silently because society tells us to move on from these losses. It doesn't matter. Hurry up, just get through it, but you see grief doesn't naturally fade. And that denial only deepens a mindset trap. It puts you in this position of, I don't know how to get out or get off the grief couch. Well, I'm here to remind you, my friend, at some point you need to rise up and prevent

8:16grief from hijacking your mindset while still honoring it. That is your kiss to keep it simple strategy. hijack your mindset. You got to figure out that you know what, there is something different on the other side of this. And there is now, I will tell you this, when you go through the stages of grief, grief is non-linear, right? It doesn't just like, okay, one and done, check, okay, move it on. I'm on step four, I'm okay, I can get through this. It doesn't work that way because a year or two or three from now. All of a sudden it may strike you, you may hear some music, you may be in a situation that brings you back to a memory that feels so real, you can reach out and touch it. All your senses are working over time and next thing you know, you're like, oh my gosh, and your heart feels heavy again. And you don't know how to move forward. And sometimes you're so paralyzed that all you can do is stand there, just sit.

9:18That grief couch may have changed and changed color, but guess what, it comes back. Grief has a weird way of showing up in our life, whether it's a loss of a person and animal that's close to you. This weekend has been hard for us. You've heard me talk about him right now, our English Bulldog. Well we had to make a very tough decision. He was aging, he wasn't doing well and he was getting older. And we had to look at our options and so this past weekend we said goodbye. Not something you really want to say to your 12 and a half year old Bulldog who brought nothing but joy, who loved golf balls and would crack them and pull them apart.

10:19His first year of life was on a golf course, he loved it. And the golfers would hit the balls off into our backyard and he would run and he was just this little little thing. And now we don't see that anymore. And I will say that on Saturday when we said goodbye to him, it was like he had a little bit of a pick me up in his step. He walked on his own because I said the magic word. You want to go bye-bye and he would perk up, he's like, yeah mom, let's go bye-bye. And off we would go, it might take five to ten minutes but he wanted to walk it out and then all of a sudden he was like I got to do a big dog stuff, I got to do my business right, I got to pedal and poodle. And so he did it amongst the leaves, smelled the grass and you could tell he was just in

11:20his element. And for a moment we saw that little golf ball puppy again. If it's real my friend and if you have an experience that I promise you you're going to, whether it's the loss of a family pup, an animal that you have cared for as long as you can remember right because they're part of the family. Maybe it's a loved one, a family member. I've had some really, really close friends lose family members this holiday season. That's not easy especially when it's connected to the holidays. Because again what happens with your mindset right, it brings you in, it draws you in to those memories and there you stay locked and loaded. Grief is real but you don't have to sit with it forever.

12:25You can climb out and get off of the grief couch and begin climbing your mountain again. And so I really wanted to talk about this because honestly when you're looking and you're wanting something out of the brand new year right, you're like, I want something more. Maybe it's a bigger dream, maybe you're expanding your business, maybe you and your spouse are dreaming things for the future because your kids are beginning to get older and you're like, okay, this is what we're going to do and you're starting to make retirement plans or whatever it looks like and you're adding this layer of hope. But with that layer of hope comes this loss of, fill in the blank, whatever it is for you. And so when we're looking at dreaming, we're looking at changing our mindset, we've got to understand grief, we've got to understand when things don't go right. How do we do it? And grief could come from a lot of different things.

13:26It can be even when you're becoming an empty nester. It can be a loss again, above a loved one. It could be a loss of a good friend, your job, maybe you recently got divorced. And now you're like, oh my goodness, I find myself in this craziness, now what do I do? Well, you can get through it, but I will say this, if you're hanging out for too long, please go get professional help. And I mean this from the bottom of my heart, don't try and live with grief on your own. Because if you cannot pull yourself up and put a smile on your face and not wear your plane, this masquerade ball, where you're putting on this thing, action like everything's okay, I mean genuinely feeling good from the inside out in the outside in. And go talk to someone professionally. If you want, send me an email, connect at CreatureNow.com.

14:33And it's one of those things where I think we began to assume that everything's just supposed to work out. But in all honesty, we're going to have more grief in our life than love. Because if you love well, you will experience grief, which means you will grieve the loss of, fill in the blank. And so with my experience on Saturday with our peppy dog, who as you can tell I love dearly and always will, I mean I never thought I would ever love a bulldog. And you know what? We will never have one. At least I will never have a bulldog again. He was our one and only bulldog. We've had other dogs, but he will be our one and only bulldog. He was special. And sometimes you know, you just have that one. And so as you begin your walk into this new year, give yourself the breath of being able

15:39to grieve your losses whatever they are. But at the same time, I want you to hijack your mindset while still honoring your grief. What does that look like in real life? Number one, set boundaries with your grief. We were talking about this earlier, right? That it's okay to be sad. It's okay to go through the stages to be mad at times angry, confused. It's okay to feel devastated, but don't let your mind camp out there 24-7. So give yourself some grief time. You can schedule it if you want to, or maybe it's just something when you feel it, you honor it. But this is where you allow yourself to feel and process. But at the same time, then you can also then, when you're done with that, you can shift your focus to small actionable steps in your day. What does that do? It helps move you forward.

16:40So maybe you go and you journal your pain for 15-20 minutes, maybe it's only five because you don't have time. That's all right. Whatever it is for you. Outline one microgoal, something very small. You can do right afterwards that says, yes, I feel alive. This is good for me when we said goodbye on top of all of that, removing our son. He's going out and getting his big first career start and getting his own place. So now not only did I have to say goodbye to our peppy dog, but I'm saying goodbye to my son and my house is feeling bigger and bigger because the rooms are getting emptier and emptier. But you see, for a moment, I allow myself to pick up the doggy bowls and just clean them. And I know that sounds like nothing big. But for me in that moment, it was just like, I'm a little bit closer to him. Even though I don't see him sitting by his little fireplace, I believe it or not, this boy,

17:44he loved his fireplace. And so we had a portable fireplace for him. And if it was summer, winter, spring, fall, didn't matter, that fireplace was on. And it was the lights on. The heater wasn't always on, but the lights were on. And it was something, right? He's an English bulldog, yeah, he's our proper peppy. And so for me, just doing that little activity, it wasn't to sit down in journal, but it was just literally standing in front of the kitchen sink. And think of him as if he was over there sitting by his little fireplace, and I was washing his doggy bowl, cleaning it and getting it ready for its next home, for someone else, for another sweet little puppy dog. What can you do to set boundaries with your grief, giving yourself that opportunity to to feel it, but then say, I'm good and I can take the next step. Number two, reframe your mindset with empowering beliefs.

18:47Grief feeds on fixed thinking. Like I'm broken forever, this isn't going to work, nothing will get better. I'm not good enough. How many times have you told yourself I'm not good enough? You've heard that somewhere and that came from a loss. And that's grief you haven't dealt with, seriously. And I don't want to make this this huge like therapy appointment, but I mean, if you're feeling something, pay attention to that. You've got some unresolved grief to deal with, and that can be something that's holding you back from fulfilling something else. So actively challenge those thoughts, remind yourself, this is painful, but it's temporary. And I am more than my loss. The loss doesn't define me. It hurts, yes, but it doesn't define who I am. Cognitive behavioral therapy, right CBT studies show the shifting perspective, rewires the

19:52brain's response to trauma and loss. But guess what? It has to be intentional. It just doesn't happen. You don't just say, okay, I'm going to do this and I'm going to feel better. It's just going to happen. It's saying, okay, wait, I feel this. I know this about myself, okay, hold on and maybe you have to make a little index card to get yourself through it. Maybe you have to do a sticky note, whatever it is. Maybe you take your expo marker and write yourself a message on your bathroom mirror. So when you see it every morning, when you walk in there, it says, this is who you are. This is what you're doing. It lifts you up. It inspires you. It's empowering. That will help you to move from the grief couch to taking your next steps. And then finally number three, anchor yourself in daily meaningful action, right? You've heard me say this a lot, intentional, create your now. We are to be intentional with our time. We are creators.

20:53We were made to create, to learn, to grow, to be stretched. Our Heavenly Father created us in His image, it makes sense. So anchor yourself in daily meaningful action that moves you forward, because moving feet forward counts more than waiting to feel ready, because I'm here to tell you you're never going to feel ready. It was probably way over two years that I had been wrestling with saying goodbye to our little puppy dog right now. There'd be times that I was like, he's not going to make it, and I don't want to have to wait. But then all of a sudden, he's like, oh, there's hope there. He's going to do it on with another week to two to three would add to months. And then we'd have another situation, and then we would try something. And I'm like, at what point, at what point are you saying, this is more for you than Him and vice versa, right?

21:54So we're never going to feel ready. So I want you to hear this, and hear it from the heart. This is not about right or wrong. This is about honoring the loss, whatever that loss is for you. And saying, okay, I understand that, and I'm going to allow myself to feel it however I know I'm going to help myself go through the process, and I'm not going to hang out there long. My friend consists of wins, whether it's a walk, a call to a friend. Maybe it's fixing dinner early in the crock pot, right? It's winter time, so it's like, oh, yeah, let's get that, stick to your ribs kind of food going. Or maybe it's starting to create a project, it's like, yeah, painting time, I can do this inside. It builds momentum in counter-axe paralysis. Movement shakes up the brain's stagnant grief loops. And that creates room for hope and healing. That's what you want to be able to do.

22:54You're honoring that grief. You're honoring the loss of, but not hanging out there too long, because my friend this two-shot pass, but only if you move. Grief is really a straight line, and it will knock you down hard. But lurking in that darkness is a chance to rebuild stronger, wiser and clearer. You are made for more. You're made for more than just surviving the loss. You're made for living beyond it. To be a living legacy so you can continue to go out and impact the world that you touch. So let your heart have room to mourn. But don't get cozy there. Your dreams deserve air. Your mind deserves freedom. Your future deserves you showing up ready, restless and ready to rise. It's not going to be perfect. It's going to be messy, but you can do it.

23:58And remember this, grief does not own your story. It's just a little chapter, a blink in your life, and a next chapter is waiting for you to start writing it. Go on peace, be present, be incredible, be you. I love you so very much. I cannot wait to see you on the other side. Blessing tags and lots and lots of love. We'll talk to you real soon. Have a glorious, glorious, blessed day. And Rhino, we will always love you. Goodbye. Feeling inspired and ready to train for life and love your journey, visit createyournow.com for more incredible resources to help you along the way. We'll see you next time on Create Your Now Your Best Selfie. And remember, always be sure you consult your physician before beginning any health and fitness plan.