Purposelessness and How to Process Grief
Host: Conrad Francis
Drink: Kilikanoon Golden Hillside
Stop blocking your ears and covering your eyes. It’s time to get some perspective.
In this week's episode, we’re talking about purposelessness and how to gain perspective from it. Later in the episode, we discuss different kinds of grief and how to process it.
This round is on Conrad “Swaggy C” Francis with the support of Justin Bourn, Michael Duncan, Marco Noe and Travis Hayto. The Simple Minds Podcast unravels topics such as personal development, philosophy, life, and business - one drink at a time.
Episode Topics:
- What is purposelessness [3:00]
- How to process grief [29:00]
Listen on: Apple Podcast | Spotify | YouTube | SoundCloud
Purpose, purposelessness, purposeless-whatever [3:00]
You’re all gonna grumble and moan about this episode. But chill. We’ll look after you.
We’re good lads so in good faith we’re spinning what could be a grim topic on its head. So there. Look at us go. Evolving and stuff.
Let’s talk purpose. Or purposelessness. The purpose in the purposelessness. That’s the one.
BJ Miller is a palliative care physician. His job is to create a dignified space and end to the lives of his patients. He’s pretty much an expert in death and he’s been noting a few patterns. On The Tim Ferriss Show he shared how being around death teaches you how you should be living.
Particularly when you’re dying people tend to lose their sense of purpose. They reflect on what they could of done. But didn’t.
But what does it mean to have purpose? How can purposelessness enrich our lives?
It’s an element of connecting with the present. How often do you take a moment and appreciate the little things happening and existing around you? The simple act of putting your hand out the window when you drive. Or noticing how beautiful the nature is around you.
It’s the “cookie effect”. When you smell a fresh baked cookie you’re completely in the present moment. The cookie has no purpose. But in that moment all you can focus on is the cookie in front of you and how damn good it looks and smells.
“Simply put - any behaviour that’s pleasure directed rather than goal directed warrants being called purposelessness” - Conrad [12:30]
Connecting with the present enables us to become more in tune with our senses. What we’re feeling. What we smell. What we hear. More often than not we forget that humans are a species. We’re animals.
Apart from Conrad. He’s a god.
Tuning our senses to appreciate things in the moment gives us perspective. It makes us perceptive to our own emotions as well as our surroundings.
“It’s the moments within the moments. Between moments” - Travis [14:30]
Good one Trav. That’s going on the gram. Watch your back Conrad, Travis is coming for your brand.
So take a moment. Let yourself stop and look around. Take a deep breath and ask yourself what you’re feeling. When it doubt, do what Marco does. He looks at the clouds. He loves a good cloud.
“Fuck you guys if you don’t love clouds. I love clouds” - Marco [27:00]
I’m ending this one here.
Now, what was next. Oh yeah. Death.
How to process grief like a boss [29:00]
We all process our grief differently. With no right or wrong way to do it, but we seem to think there is a right way to do it.
This week, Travis has been reflecting on the passing of his cousin. His cousin passed when Trav was 18 and he’s never properly processed it until his friend passed away from similar circumstances. He ended up grieving for them both at the same time.
You can grieve over a variety of things, not just death. Maybe you lost your job, or your relationship ended. Trav opens it up to the group and asks what’s the right way to deal with grief and what advice they have to share.
Conrad experienced grief early on in life when he lost his grandparents. Being so young, he never processed his feelings. Now, it shows up in different ways. Where there is instability in his life, grief can be triggered. Conrad suggests using grief as a tool to process how you feel about something. In order to move into a phase of acceptance, you need to sort through everything you’re feeling. Acknowledge what it is, don’t suppress it.
Michael says there are different levels of grief. You deal with grief differently at different points in your life. Emotional intelligence plays a bit part. If you’re not ready to process something, then you can’t accept it.
Marco hasn’t experienced any tragedy in his family and fears that he won’t be able to grieve enough. There is this misconception that there is an x y z way of dealing with grief. That you naturally go through all the phases. Which can be the case for some people. But typically you need to acknowledge what you’re feeling and use it as perspective to move forward.
Justin never experienced a death in his family until his grandmother passed away. But because he had time to process the end of her life, he was able to celebrate her life when she passed. He felt joy knowing that she had lived a great life. Not everybody can experience death this way. Sometimes it's sudden. The best advice we can give is to have honest conversations with your loved ones. Don’t let yourself regret anything.
Travis would tell himself that you’ll get through this and no one is given something that they can’t handle.
Don’t tell yourself a bullshit story. Let emotion flow through you. Men don’t talk about real issues with each other enough. If you’re struggling, reach out to your close friends. We promise you it’ll create a bond to last a lifetime.
Subscribe to the Simple Minds podcast for more hot takes on emo topics that we make positive. We’re actually crushin’ it. Seriously. I dare you to challenge us. We’ll turn anything grim into an opportunity to be better.
Grab a drink and check out our Facebook and Instagram. Give us your hot take on the topics discussed in this episode.
We challenge you to appreciate the little things around you this week! Go out and enjoy the clouds. Then hit up Marco because you should probably start a club or something. He’d like that. We think he’s lonely.
Mentioned in This Episode
Social Links