27 -Overcoming Grief - Maggie - Transcript

Copyright Robbins-Madanes Training

Reconnecting with what you’ve lost – Maggie

Film Transcript

C Cloe MadanesT Anthony RobbinsM MaggieAudience

C: Do you ever feel held back by a loss that has stopped your progress in life? Do you ever have trouble smiling or truly letting go with a feeling of love, fun, or joy? How much of your time and energy is spent struggling with feelings of failure about something that happened in the past? What would it be like to regain freedom in your emotional life ßso that you can experience complete joy and playfulness, even if at other times you still feel sad or fearful? This film will show you a technique for overcoming loss and finding emotional freedom, no matter what losses or difficulties you may have experienced.

We begin with Tony Robbins speaking at a seminar in front of 2000 people. Maggie stands up to talk about the loss of her seventeen-year-old son eight years ago.

T: What’s your name, where’re you from?

M: Maggie Kessley and I’m from Suny Valley, California.

T: Wow, a long way. Wow. [Audience cheers]

M: I had to completely shift and, um, realign my values. I didn’t realize for the last, um, eight years I’ve been struggling to try to give my son’s death some meaning and what I was really having a difficult time facing was my biggest fear which is failure. And what’s the ultimate failure a mother can feel but not being able to protect their child? So I’ve given myself permission to realign my values so that I can start feeling some joy and some fun [audience cheers] and I can still give.

C: Maggie’s feelings are universal for any parent that has lost a child: the feeling that you could have done better in protecting them and that since they have died, you have failed. Parents feel this even when there is no possible way that they could have prevented the death. It’s not a logical reaction but it is emotional and it can ruin your life. Having been at the seminar, Maggie understands that she needs to make a change so that she can experience joy again. This will be Tony’s goal from now on.

[Audience is clapping]

T: Now let me ask you a question. Your son or daughter, who was it? Page1


M: My son.

T: Your son, what was his name?

M: Leonard.

T: How old was he?

M: Seventeen.

T: He was seventeen years old and you should have been there protecting him?

M: I realize that consciously that wasn’t possible but in here, as a mom…

T: I understand.

M: That was my job.

T: And what would he want for you?

M: He would want me to be happy right now.

T: How, how unhappy would his spirit be, would his soul be, seeing you the way you’ve been the last eight years?

M: He would be tormented.

T: So are you gonna beat yourself up for that too or…?

M: No.

T: What was one of the funniest things he ever said to you?

M: Are you really gonna go out like that? [All laugh]

T: He’s talking about your life the last eight years. [Maggie laughs]

C: When Tony asked what was the funniest thing the son ever said, Maggie said it was a moment of playful criticism. Tony’s response was that the son’s comment was really about Maggie’s behavior over the last eight years. Tony’s comment locates the son in the present tense, in a position of observing and advising her.

Now take a moment. Think of someone who loved you who has since passed away. What would they want from you right now? What would they say to you about the way you’ve been living your life? Do they say that out of concern and love for you? What could you do to honor their wishes for you? If you like, press pause and write it down. Now Tony will help Maggie to explain the response she has taken to her son’s death.

M: I’m sorry. Page2


T: He was talking about your life the last eight years, you heard me the first time. So sometimes it’s interesting to step out of yourself and stop thinking that you’re the most powerful force in the universe, ‘cause there’s a lot of ego in that and your not an egotistical woman, and sometimes when we loose something that is a great source of love for us, the way we connect with our self is through pain. And so, as horrible as the situation may be, and I’ve not lost one of my children so I can only imagine, I can only imagine, so I’m not belittling in any way, but I also know what you’re capable of. And sometimes that first three months, six months, year even two years, there’s so many anchors, there’re so many pieces it’s hard to find that meaning but it’s impossible to find the meaning when it becomes an addiction within you to meet your own ability to connect with yourself, and for somebody who’s always taken care of everybody else it’s even harder to give yourself that permission.

C: When we loose an important source of love, one way we hold onto it is to connect with ourselves out of a feeling of pain, guilt, or regret. Although Maggie could not have prevented her son’s death she still beats herself up about it as though this would prolong her identity as his mother. At some point she became addicted to her pain as a source of connection. Now she needs to find new ways to connect with and honor her son right now, today. One way to do that is to find other ways of connecting with her self, apart from thinking about his death.

T: So I’m really, really pleased your giving yourself that permission but I think if you were to close your eyes right now and, do you have a spiritual belief, a religious belief?

M: Yes I do. I believe in God.

C: In order to help Maggie, Tony needs to know the religious beliefs that influence her. If Maggie believes in God and that her son exists in some way after death, she needs to align herself emotionally with what she believes. She needs an experience that is not just intellectual but emotional and physical that will change the way she unconsciously reacts to the fact of her son’s passing.

T: Do you believe in a hereafter?

M: Yes I do.

T: Do you believe your boy then is still vibrant?

M: Yes I do.

T: Then I want you to right now with your eyes closed, Margaret, I want you to feel him holding you, kiss you on the top of the head, and then looking into your eyes. Feel his presence completely. You let me know when his presence is completely with you.

M: He’s right here in front.

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T: And I want you to listen carefully to what he’s gonna say ‘cause what he’s gonna say will not only free you but it will also remind you forever what’s the truth. Listen carefully now as he tells you the truth, that’ll set you free.

C: Whenever people get stuck in a position of helplessness and grief, there is always an answer that they have not been listening to. Tony knows that Maggie already has the answer that will set her free and that it would be most healing for her to receive the answer through the voice of her son. Paradoxically, the presence that she misses most in her son is the presence that will answer her questions now and set her free from her grief.

T: And feel the depth of what he is telling you. That sets you free in every cell in your body. Not just in your head like you were a moment ago but in your heart, in your soul, in your spirit, your hands, your feet, your face, your smile, your eyes. Ears hearing, eyes that now have insight, not just sight. Feel the strength he sends into you, the strength you knew he always had and now he feels. Can you feel his strength? Hear what he’s saying to you and let it pierce you. Hear the truth. And as you start to take in the truth, watch him begin to smile when you begin to truly take in the truth. Not fake take it in, really take it in. There’s no one else in this room who’s had a loss in their life that is severe enough for them to think now about what’s really true. Sometimes the loss is a family friend. Sometimes those losses are not even people, it’s loss of a, an ideal, a dream or an innocence you may have felt was taken from you.

Breathe deep. Breathe deep and feel like you’re filled with something that’s always there. There’s never been a moment in your life when you went for a breath and the air wasn’t there. It’s always there waiting for you. So there is no fear of the past or the present. There is no meaning that is lasting that is not one that empowers. There’s only the illusion we create. What is the strength within you that could be activated now? What can be awakened for a lifetime? What could make you smile where you used to cry? What could make you smile where you used to cry and it would be a real smile? What m[cuts off] is infused with the love of God, the love of yourself, the love of life? What could you hear that would make you smile or laugh? What could you do so that you step forward now? That’s it, and stepped into a new light forever. Never looking back, but knowing you, it’s in you, and it’s before you.

Each step forward brings you closer to that which you love. Each step forward brings you closer to that which you love most and every day you could take another step. Sometimes we think it’s too far away, but we all know that adage that the greatest journey begins with, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. We know that phrase. It’s time to live it.

When you’re filled with faith, you know that everything you’ve ever needed has been provided for you, it’s time to take in the precious present, the presents that have been given to every one of us. Maybe what you need to do is take some baby steps. Little baby steps is all you need. A bunch of little baby steps become a big step. It’s so easy. That’s it. That’s it. That’s it. Forever. That’s it. That’s it, forever with a joy that comes with that, everyday waking up looking forward to the day. Looking forward to what the next steps will bring. Looking forward to glorify and laughing, appreciating every moment of life forever. Sometimes we get the giggles

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for no good reason and then we know there’s an unconscious gift in it all. And that was just for you Margaret and no one else. It had nothing to do with anybody here, especially those who couldn’t relate to such a situation because they haven’t had that situation. What do you feel now?

M: God loves me.

T: Yea. Always has?

M: Yea.

T: Always will. And you love God?

M: Very much.

T: I know. That’s why you smile. [Maggie laughs] And what did your son tell you?

M: That I’m a beautiful free spirit that needs to be out there.

T: Mm. How big did he smile? Give her a big hand for this. [Audience claps]

C: When we are in grief we are mourning a part of ourselves that we miss, the happiness we felt in the past, or the presence of mind we should have had to prevent a tragedy but paradoxically, when we over focus on grief we are also preventing ourselves from being whole right now in the present. As long as Maggie was focused on the circumstances of her son’s death and what that meant about her as a mother she was unable to be the mother that she needed to be for him right now. She has to let go of the responsibility she feels for the past in order to be fully responsible for herself right now in the present. When she can let go of her grief she can be the mother that she was meant to be.

T: How big did he smile when you got it? ‘Cause you didn’t get it right away, did you?

M: No.

T: Where did it go in your body when it, when you, when it finally penetrated you? Where did you feel a rel[cuts off], enter, penetrate, or release? M: It was in here.

T: Yea.

M: And my son’s smile which I don’t see very often any more.

T: Well how could he smile when you’ve been sitting there beating yourself [bleep] up for eight years? Would you be smiling if he was miserable for eight straight years?

M: No.

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T: Beating himself up as if he did something to you? No. Is he also more whole now?

M: Very much so.

T: Can you feel that?

M: I see a whole being.

T: Yea. Guess what?

M: What?

T: Now you’re being the mom you always wanted to be. [Audience claps] Is that just a bullshit phrase or is it the truth?

M: No, it’s very much the truth.

T: Yes. So now you can reclaim the pride along with the happiness.

M: For a change.

T: Yea. How’s that? Now, let’s talk about getting laid. [Maggie laughs] ‘Cause that’s the real reason you’re depressed. [Maggie laughs]

C: Tony’s joke contains an important truth. People often focus on one part of their life as if it will solve all the other parts and meet all of your other needs. Just as focusing on money will not help you to experience love, focusing on the loss of happiness will not help you to be happy right now. Tony wants to make sure that Maggie’s need for connection and love are being met by a real living person in her life.

Now take a moment to ask yourself, when you focus on your loss, what are you trying to retrieve? Happiness from the past? An identity about yourself? A source of love and connection that you felt has been lost? Now ask yourself, what are you doing to experience these things right now: happiness, identity, and love. The truth is that these feelings are only experienced by being fully present in the moment. Tony will now help Maggie to experience the love she felt with her son in a new way.

[Maggie and audience are laughing]

T: Now food will never replace that intimacy with the right person.

M: No.

T: I know you’ve been with the wrong person. Right?

M: Yea.

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T: Yea. You don’t have to hold your breath on that. You’ve been with the wrong… Who here’s been with the wrong person? Say, “I.” [Audience answers “I”] More than once. Say, “I.” [Audience answers “I”] To a level of extreme stupidity that it’s hard to even imagine and you kind of laugh ‘cause otherwise you wanna kill your f[bleep]in’ self. Say, “I.” [Audience answers “I,” Tony laughs] You’re amongst family, [audience laughs] the family of humanity.

M: Yea.

T: It would be very interesting if you were to take your son’s love as God’s love, and I’d like you to put that microphone in that person’s hand right beside you, he’ll hold it for you, and I’d like you to take your hand like this and I want you to do this with your fingers which really doesn’t mean anything but it really feels good. [Audience laughs] And I want you to take your hands like this and I want you to bring, first bring this hand on your heart, which is not very far from your breast by the way, and then you’ll bring this hand on top, like this, and I want you to breathe in your heart [Tony inhales and exhales deeply] and I want you to imagine in your heart all of your son’s love and his wicked sense of humor. [Maggie laughs] That’s right [Tony laughs], that’s right. His wick… ‘cause he has a wicked sense of humor, doesn’t he? Yea, I know. And what I want you to do right now is I want you to feel all that inside and that humor, that wicked sense of humor and his love, and then I want you to feel all the love God’s got in you, in fact I want no one else to do this. Standing up now. [Audience laughs] Because no one else here has ever had anyone in their life who did something that hurt their heart, did they? No one has had that experience, have they? I didn’t think so.

So what I’d like you to do is I’d like you to just breathe for a moment. Breathe in your heart, deep in your heart. But when you breathe deep in your heart I also want you to feel a strength, like a renewal. Feeling that renewal, like wow. There must be something there that loved me enough to give me the gift of life. I didn’t have to earn this life, I didn’t have to pay for this body, thank God, could you imagine the expense? This heart keeps on beating even though I ignore it most of the time. A hundred thousand times a day this heart beats, pumping through sixty thousand miles of blood vessels. That’s enough, by the way, if you put ‘em end to end they go around the earth twice at the equator. That’s what’s in you.

Think of the power of your heart, pumping along, feeling what you need, even when you pretend it’s not. Think of the ears you have that you didn’t have to pay for, didn’t have to work for. They’re just given to you as a gift. Who gave you that gift? Where did that gift come from? What made you so worthy of that gift? How about those eyes that can see so much and take it in, turn it into feelings. What’s it like when you look at the crashing waves, a magnificent flower, or a man or woman you love, a child? And all those eyes helped create that. The muscles you move with. Think of the power of this gift right now. This gift called you and what you reside in while you’re here. How about that tongue? Now that’s a gift. What has that tongue given you in the past that you cherish, appreciate, enjoy. Hmm. How about that skin that can feel a caress or excitement or tension or touch?

Feel it. Feel the magnificence of it all, the power of it all. And you may be wondering, what made you deserving of this? And some of you forgot that you won the race. You remember the race that you began many, many, many moons ago?

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Remember it now. With your eyes deep inside you, filled with energy and love and your heart as well, remember it.

You got up early that morning, you put on your Nikes, you were very excited. You knew this was the most important race of your life. You fully prepared, you lined up at the starting line, and the one gun went off. Bam! And you and ten million other sperms went on the race. [Audience laughs] Then you were swimming your ass off, tail wiggling like crazy, and you had to get there at just the right time. If you were first you didn’t win and if you were last you didn’t win. You had to get there at just the right moment and boom! Nail that egg. [Tony and audience laugh] And you were the victor over ten million other sperms and this is the booby prize: [audience laughs] your life. You won! You won! You’ve already won. Yes, you are more than significant. You’re more significant than nine million nine hundred ninety nine thousand other sperm. [Audience laughs] So just think: I am the victor. I could have ended up on the side of the walls some place or something. [Tony and audience laugh] Stuck in between some magazine pages. [Audience laughs] But not me! Not me. I was one of the special ones that made it, one of the few who do versus the many who talk. What a victory. And standing over your body you are the prize. You are the prize. This is the trophy: life. Life. Your life. Some of you forgot you won, and there’s a reason.

Along the way, the unbelievable love that created you, the unbelievable love that created you, you forgot because somebody didn’t like you in the moment, love you in the moment, was mean to you in the moment, and I’m just wondering if you can think of some people who didn’t love you and it hurt you but if you could do it from a place of going, “I wonder why?” If it wasn’t me, and it really wasn’t, could it be they felt insignificant themselves? Could it be they felt uncertain? Could it be they felt like they weren’t enough in all kinds of other areas? Could it be someone else didn’t love them? Could it be they don’t realize they were the sperm that won the race? And I want you to do this. Open your eyes and you’re gonna take your hands and you’re gonna breathe in your nose like this [Tony inhales rapidly] and you’re gonna build energy right in here and then what we’re gonna do is this. You’re gonna take your hands out and your gonna go [Tony inhales] and then you’re gonna bring your hands in where your hand that the fingers are held on top and you’re gonna bring it in. Touch your heart like this and you’re gonna feel like when you’re doing this [Tony inhales] in through your nose and like your snapping out to the stars all the love you’ve ever felt in your life, the love you have for God for letting you, being the victorious sperm [Tony inhales, audience laughs] and you’re gonna feel like you’re connecting all the stars. Then you’re gonna bring it in and you bring it in and bring that love back into you and bring it back behind you and into the people that never loved you. They never loved you ‘cause no one loved them. They never loved you ‘cause they didn’t know how to love. It had nothing to do with you.

I want you to think of the people that hurt you most and send that love back in. So take the love in your heart, breathe it in, [Tony inhales] and as you snap it out, how high? Raise your body up high, your arms up high. Feel an extension like you’re, you’re taking in, you’re snapping love into the stars, bringing love back inside you, and then back behind you into your past that anybody who didn’t love you and fill them up, and then back out again. Feel all the love you’ve got and then in, all the way in. Again. Strong, in, all the way back to those who need love. Out, in, out.

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Feel all the energy, all the love you’re having, spinning in the stars, then bring all the love in the universe into your heart, deep into you and behind you. All those that didn’t love. Back up again. All you can feel, extending out to stars, take everything in the stars in. Out again. In, out, take the breath in, out. Faster now. Every time you give it out more energy. Breathe it in and out your nose now each time. Every time you breathe in, bring more, bring it all the way back. See all those people filling up faster, stronger. [Tony inhales and exhales rapidly]

Extend it all the way up. Feel yourself filled with more love than ever before. Then bring it in, all the way back to everyone who’s ever needed it, including you. Think about all those people that hurt you. Just feel them filled with love. If they would have had that love they could have loved me. So I’m a give it to them ‘cause I’m the winning sperm. Get a hug from the person next to you and have a seat.

Whoooa, yes! Maggie, tell us. Give her microphone back. So, what about your son?

M: What would you like to know? [Tony laughs]

T: Give her a hand ladies and gentlemen, [audience cheers] give her a hand.

C: When Tony asked Maggie about her son she responded openly with no sign of pain. Her grief is healed. At the beginning of the conversation Maggie had stood up with the feeling of constriction and un-consolable grief. Intellectually she knew better and she knew that she had to realign her values and her beliefs but emotionally she did not know how to do it. Tony recognized that she was trapped in an old pattern of grief that had become addictive. By focusing on the loss of her son and her son’s love Maggie had learned to connect with herself in a very intense way. Maggie needed a full body experience where she understands the importance of letting go of her son’s death. Tony guided her to experience her son telling her to let go. Next Maggie needed a physical exercise that she could do on a continuous basis to help her to expand her heart and her love beyond her focus on her son. By expanding her love she will strengthen herself and find a deeper meaning in her life and in her love.

Here are some steps for overcoming loss and rediscovering love and joy in your life:

First, what are the true deeper wishes of the person you have lost? What would someone that loves you want you to experience in your life? Would they want you to let go, to find the ability to smile, or would they want you to dedicate your heart to expanding your love and helping others?

Second, what needs have you been trying to meet by remaining in grief? When people loose an external source of love they often find an intense way to give themselves love and connection through their grief and suffering. This can become addictive and very destructive. What are some of the ways that you can experience love and connection? Who else in your life could receive your love and connection right now?

Third, focus on gratitude. Gratitude is a special emotion because the presence of gratitude erases conflicted emotions such as anger, guilt, and fear. What can you

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be grateful for? Think for instance in your human body, the air you can breathe, and the comforts of privileges you enjoy compared to so many people around the world. If you want to be realistic about your life you need to honor and feel grateful for these privileges.

Fourth, expand your love beyond a single source. It is easy to believe that all of your love comes from one person but it is not true. You only feel the love that you give. Practice the exercise of sending your love out to the world and feeling it return when you bring it back in. This will make the experience of love more plentiful in your life.

Fifth, remember to focus on your body. So many people become stuck in one or two emotional states without realizing that they can always use their body to shift their emotions. If you are feeling sad or depressed, pay attention to your posture and your breathing. By stretching your body, breathing fully, and doing the expansion exercise that Maggie did you can shift your state to one of gratitude and openness whenever you need to.

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27 -Overcoming Grief - Maggie - Transcript