MindFlex - Grief & Gratitude - Can the co-exist? - with Tamar Livingstone

topic of the feminine mystique what we can learn from our biblical heroines this class is sponsored in loving memory of robert and phyllis rose imagine year after year you join your extended family your in-laws your brother-in-law your sister-in-law you and your husband you all get together for new year's in mexico you sit around the table having a great time catching up connecting and the conversation turns to everybody's careers you're a mid-level project manager and you're up for a promotion soon so you're so excited to share about the exciting news that's on your horizon your brother shares about his recent promotion he's given you some tips your sister-in-law is still enjoying her bonus from last year there's a lot to celebrate next year it's time for the annual new year's vacation again and so you all head back to mexico this time your extended family is all celebrating their different professional advancements while you still find yourself in that same mid-level job at the same company now imagine this conversation takes place year after year everybody's celebrating their professional advancements their promotions the way they've moved on to bigger and better and you're still in the same place as you were when the conversation began and all you want is for the situation to change you're feeling lousy that the promotion hasn't come through this is exactly what happens to a very influential yet hardly known biblical woman named hannah chana or hannah as she is sometimes called was married to a very holy man named al-khanna every year hannah and her husband travel on the same trip to jerusalem to celebrate the holidays in the holy temple in jerusalem they go just the two of them because they're childless even after years of marriage and longing for children and year after year as she makes this trip to jerusalem she sees the families all around her are growing her neighbors now are a family of five she now has a new niece thanks to her sister who gave birth she has a new nephew because her brother had a baby this year as well and she's really seeing the families around her expand while she and her husband are still alone just the two of them making this annual trip to jerusalem now imagine you're hana's husband you see the longing in her eyes you hear the pain in her heart what do you do this is what he did alcana in his great love for his wife just wants to end her suffering he sees her pain and he just wants to do whatever he can to take it away and he also wants to encourage her to make the most out of her circumstances so he says to her hannah why are you so sad aren't i good for you don't we have a beautiful life am i not better than children i think we're all familiar with this voice sometimes it comes from the outside a well-intended friend or family member but sometimes this voice comes from within our own selves right sometimes we have a voice in our head that just urges us to just be happy with what we have especially today in our corona world we're all going through different versions of this some of us are working reduced hours than we're formally used to but thank god we still have a job some of us lost our jobs totally but thank god we have a spouse who's still employed some of us are suffering from health challenges but thank god we haven't experienced the death in the family we're all suffering but we hear that voice in our head saying it could still be worse just focus on gratitude find the silver lining and what happens is that we often feel guilty for feeling our own pain and so we try to ignore it how does this work what happens to us when we talk to ourselves this way or when others talk to us that way what happened to hana when her husband said that to her this comment of alchemines created a profoundly painful realization within hana in that moment when he turned to her and wanted to reassure her that she has a beautiful life she knew that she was alone she knew that nobody else understood how great her desire for a child was not even her husband who also wanted a child she knew in those moments that she had a very deeply personal yearning i want to point out that elkanah's comment to her is not a flaw in their marriage it doesn't mean he wasn't a caring husband or that he's not a thoughtful empathic husband you see no matter how great your friends are or your husband is or your mother is or whoever else nobody will want our dreams to come true as much as we do we can't expect someone to want something for us in the same deep level that we want it for ourselves there's nothing wrong with that it doesn't mean they aren't good friends what happens to us when we want something so badly and no one else understands just how bad we want it we end up feeling really alone and we all deal with this loneliness at some point in our lives we all have to face moments when we want something that nobody else understands and sometimes we ourselves don't even understand it we start second guessing ourselves maybe i shouldn't want it anymore maybe it doesn't make sense that i'm yearning for this maybe i really am an ungrateful person maybe i just don't know how to be happy why am i always looking for something that i don't have right and this self-doubt and this loneliness is part of the human condition and it's vulnerable the question that we have to ask ourselves is what do we do with this loneliness what do we do with our vulnerability when we get to a place where we want something and we start doubting whether it makes sense to even want it or the people around us try to convince us out of it what do we do with that either we internalize that pain and we become disconnected from ourselves we become passive very hopeless we shut down we become more and more depressed right we start to believe the story that people tell us that we really are alone in our quest that we have a dream that's just never going to come true or a dream that's not even worth dreaming we'll never have that it's impossible we start to tell ourselves i'm just not worthy of that let me give it up let it go and we fall into a dark hole and that feeling of being alone is so painful that we often numb ourselves and start ignoring that we even had the wish in the first place well that was so stupid i can't even believe i wanted that promotion i should have realized it was out of reach for me or sometimes we take those painful feelings and we turn them outwards we start projecting them and externalizing them onto the people around us we become very short-tempered we snap at the people around us we lose our cool we yell we blame how come you're never supportive how come you don't understand me why do you always say the wrong things can't you just be there for me we start getting really angry at the people around us so neither of these seems like a great option on the one hand it doesn't sound like a great option to just become hopeless and give up our dream but on the other hand it doesn't seem to be a really great option to start becoming angry with everybody what are we supposed to do so hana teaches us about a third option chana helps us resolve this inner conflict what if there was a way to acknowledge our pain to own it as part of our story but instead of allowing it to make us depressed we would allow our pain to uplift us to take us somewhere even higher ghana asserts she makes up her mind and says i am not a victim in the hands of fate i don't have to just accept whatever situation i find myself in and on the other hand i also don't have to accept that the entire burden of my life's outcome is upon me alone i don't have to make myself crazy trying to figure out how to have a baby and how to make this dream come true i don't have to be alone i don't have to become neurotic and try to control every circumstance in my life in order to make my dream happen because if i make god my partner i can shape my future destiny and so what hannah does in her moment of great pain is she prays she takes her longing and her desire to god prayer is when we acknowledge that god is control of everything and that we can influence our life by connecting to him we have a chance of changing our circumstances by connecting to god dr brene brown writes that when we dare to drop the armor that protects us from feeling vulnerable we open ourselves up to the experiences that bring purpose and meaning to our lives when we lean into our feelings when we stop pretending that they aren't there when we stop ignoring our pain and our discomfort when we own our feelings even when they're lonely and uncomfortable that's when we can begin to build the meaning and purpose in our lives that we crave and i think we have to make this very important paradigm shift where we start to recognize that there's no such thing as a good feeling or a bad feeling oftentimes we judge our feelings and say oh pain that's a bad feeling that's not a good feeling that means i'm not a good person i can't feel that way instead what we might want to think about is comfortable or uncomfortable feelings pleasant or unpleasant feelings but no feeling is good or bad all feelings serve a purpose all are important they all teach us important things about ourselves and so hana taught us that getting in touch with her loneliness with those deep emotions is a prerequisite for prayer elkanah was trying to console his wife by helping her realize all the good fortune that she already has a loving and stable marriage livelihood success all of the wonderful blessings things that are undoubtedly beautiful gifts he was suggesting that she should just start accepting the circumstances of her life and make the most of them hinting that some things are just not worth fighting for or impossible to attain and sometimes we do choose to do that some things we decide we're just not going to fight for but sometimes we have a yearning that is so strong burning so deep inside of us that we just don't want to give up on and so hana teaches us that we don't have to that we can still be grateful for what we have while also knowing that there's something more and longing for that author megan devine says so eloquently the idea that appreciating what you've got is the antidote for the pain of what you're missing is a fallacy gratitude and grief don't cancel each other out they exist side by side in order to make us feel better from those moments of pain and longing we try to instead shift our focus to the positive so that we x out and dismiss those feelings of longing but we really don't have to ignore one in order to feel the other we can feel both at the same time hana also taught us that when we have a burning desire for something when we have a dream that can't be rationalized or explained to others we can still hold on to it we don't need others to understand or share in our dream in order for us to pursue it so how do we do it how do we achieve what feels impossible and what the people that we love are often making us doubt and what we ourselves are starting to doubt there's only one thing to do when we want to break the limits of our current existence we need to tap into infinity we need to tap into the world that has no limitations that isn't subject to the regular laws of the natural order of the world we need to attach ourselves to god and this is the idea of having a god mindset we know now through all the amazing research about the brain that when we believe something to be possible we can really achieve it we know about a growth mindset and how what we think and what we set our minds to actually shapes our brains there are faculties and capacities that we have that we don't even realize levels of development that we can achieve that we are totally untapped as of now and when we attach ourselves to god we're even more capable than we could even fathom so even though it might have seemed impossible for hana to have had a baby after so many years she refused to accept the limitations of the physical world there's a story of a young boy who was traveling with his father through the forest in a wagon and they approached a creek and as they approached the creek and the wheels of the wagon went into the water the wagon got stuck and the boy starting to become afraid looked to his father longingly and said papa what are we supposed to do how are we gonna cross the creek our wagon is stuck and so his father said my son check the wagon look for your resources and so his son said okay and he eagerly climbs into the back of the wagon started looking through what was there and he found what he thought was the perfect thing he found a metal rod and he said okay i'm gonna take this metal rod rod and i'm gonna start digging by the wheels and i'm gonna you know remove the mud and then our wagon will be able to continue through it and so he takes the rod he starts digging through the mud gives the wagon a good push and tries to allow the inertia to push the wagon forward but alas he's unsuccessful starting to become a little worried he looks forward to his father and says papa what should i do it didn't work so his father says go back to the wagon and look for more resources so he climbs into the wagon and he sees a plank a wooden plank so he takes this wood plank he tries to lay it across the creek hoping that it will be strong enough and wide enough for the wagon to proceed across it and cross the creek on this wood plank he sets it down he attempts to get the wagon over and as the wagon is on the wood plank the plank crushes under the weight of the wagon he's unsuccessful now the wagon is stuck further in the water in a deeper part of the creek really getting worried he looks to his father and says papa what should i do now says my son go back into the wagon and look for your resources he goes back into the wagon and the only last option he could even think of that could be useful are some buckets so he tries to take the buckets he's hoping to lift the tires of the wagon up on these buckets so that he can get out of the water safely and the last to no avail he's unsuccessful sweating and exhausted and terrified he turns to his father and says papa i don't know what to do we're stuck we're going to be here forever we have no way out we're out of resources and his father turns to him and says my son you haven't used all your resources yet and he says but papa i have there isn't anything left on the wagon look it's empty and his father says my son you forgot to ask me for help i am one of your resources and so this is what hana did she didn't accept the word no she knew that she didn't try all the options yet she took her broken heart to god and she prayed and so even though prayer has been around from time immemorial people have prayed since the first human adam adam in the garden of eden pray to god it's only years later after the jewish nation was born after we were released from slavery in egypt and entered the land of israel that prayer took on a completely different form and different structure hana came and taught us about a whole new dimension of prayer and a whole deeper way of attaching ourselves to the infinite power of god may we all be blessed with the opportunity to pray from our hearts and to strive to achieve our greatest