In 18 months, I lost my 18 year old brother to suicide and my dad to cancer.

Here are the five truths death taught me about life.

Now before I get into this, I just want to say this stuff happened a few years ago and I've had to do a lot of work to get to where I am today to talk about this, to share about this.

And the reason I'm talking about this is because a lot of people, whenever I bring this up on some sort of social media post, it gets a lot of attention.

And so I really want to dig into this because what you learn in the death and grieving process teaches you so much about life and creates such a level of awareness that is so important.

So let's get into it.

Hard truth number one, life is temporary.

Now we say this, right?

You say that, but do you really understand it?

Do you really know that the people in your life that you care about won't be there forever?

Like, have you really thought about that?

The job you do, the activities you do, the identity you have, the relationship, all of that is temporary.

This life is temporary.

And you don't realize that until you lose somebody you care about.

And for me, when I lost my younger brother and dad at that time it was sort of like, well, that stuff doesn't happen to me, right?

Do you ever feel like that?

Like that happens in the movies?

So when that my younger brother took his own life, I couldn't believe it because I thought I had so much time later on to go back and build a better relationship with him, right?

And I realized that couldn't happen and how temporary life was.

Same with my dad.

Later on we'll be able to talk about this.

You know, whatever it is we're going through, it's, you know, it's always going to be like that.

And you know what I mean, the same old stuff that we get used to and then one day it's gone and you really realize that.

And losing my dad was a real eye opener for me in just how fragile and temporary life is, right?

And it made me really question myself and how I was showing up.

And I hope that in this video this helps create awareness for you as well.

Because whatever it is you're doing, it's temporary.

So embrace it, enjoy it and be as present with it as you can.

Number two, hard truth.

Waiting becomes regret.

Have you ever had those moments in your life that you regret because you waited on doing something?

Now this isn't just about death, but the death process taught me this about life.

And a lot of this stuff I'm going to talk about is transferable into life, not just death.

But these are the lessons sometimes we learn in death that make us more aware and awake in life.

So waiting for stuff, right?

The thing you want to say to the person, the business you want to start, the project you want to buy, the animal you want to get, the place you want to travel to, all that stuff shows up in our life, the opportunities, right?

And when we wait and we don't do the thing, we regret it later.

It's better to take the chance.

It's better to go do the thing and have it fail or not work out than to look back and go, man, I regret that.

Regret is the worst.

And that's one thing in my life that I really wanted to live from is like it is to know that I went after things.

Look, I have regrets.

I made a lot of poor decisions along the way, but I also went after a lot of things, things that looked crazy at the time still do to some people.

But I don't want to have that feeling like I regretted not doing something because I feel like regretting something you did is less.

It doesn't hurt as much as the stuff that you didn't do when you know you could have.

When you had that potential, right?

And death, losing somebody really teaches you that fast.

Because there's never a perfect time to say I love you to your dad or your mom or your brother.

Never a perfect time to get together and make it a priority, spend time with them, because they won't be here forever.

So it's a good reminder.

Truth number three, grief doesn't end, it just transforms.

Grief is a spectrum, right?

It comes in waves.

And if you've ever faced death, you realize that, you know, you'll.

You'll have the emotions of anger, confusion, frustration, deep sadness, laughter, joy.

Like all these things will come up, right?

It's all normal.

It's important to allow yourself the opportunity to feel and accept whatever's, Whatever's coming up.

It's not right or wrong.

Everybody's process is their process.

Nobody teaches us this stuff, right?

But with grief especially, you never fully get over losing your dad or losing your brother or losing your mom or losing your.

Your animal or losing somebody you care about, your best friend.

You just get better at processing how it shows up.

The emotions that show up, it just changes form, right?

You get to learn when certain feelings about them come up.

Maybe it's something, some sort of message you're getting or some sort of remembering.

You just you get used to just dealing with it.

And that's just the reality of life.

It doesn't knock you off as much as it once did.

It still hurts, but you've gotten better at processing it.

Truth number four, this is probably the biggest one.

It doesn't matter who you are, how successful you are.

No matter how much success you have, you are not protected from grief and loss.

You will have to lose somebody you care about.

Somebody you care about will die at some point.

And this is where you really get shown what you're made of.

It's really the most humbling experience that one can have in life, right?

You can achieve all this stuff, all these accolades, but when you lose somebody you love, man, does it bring you off your high horse real quickly.

We're not taught this stuff in school.

We're not taught to manage the emotions that come with loss.

That person, you'll never see them again.

And when that happens to you, it's so confronting.

But it's one of life's best teachers, and this is why I'm talking about this, because death teaches us about life in general.

It takes us sometimes to get a death to happen for us to really appreciate what this is right now and to be present and to be aware of the whole experience so that you don't have to wait for a death.

To be present and aware of this present moment.

That's really what it is.

How present are you with the things that you love, the people you love, the people you care about?

That's what's so important.

Truth number five.

People matter more than anything.

The people in your life, the relationships you built are your life, right?

The people from the past you may not talk to anymore, those have shaped who you are.

The people that are in your life now, the family, your friends, it doesn't matter what your relationship's like with all of them.

But the reality is those people are the most important thing in your life.

Because imagine all those people went away, you'd be alone in this world by yourself, right?

And really understanding the value that those people have in your life and really maximizing how much those people now in your life matter, especially the ones that really light you up, they'll really fill your cup, right?

And it's important to appreciate them and to fill them and.

And make their.

Make them feel better than they did before, not worse.

You know, there's people that you meet, you're like, wow, that person really makes me better, feel better than I did before.

That really fills my cup.

It's important to have those people, but it's also important to recognize that and to serve them as well with what you have, right?

Giving, not just taking and just knowing that all of these people in your life are.

It's not.

They're temporary, but they're all serving a purpose and realizing that relationships are so important and nurturing those relationships and cutting out the ones that aren't good for your mental health, right?

Because if you can't be present, if you can't be connected to your heart, if you can't be you and these people block you from that, then get rid of them.

It's not worth it.

It's not worth your peace, right?

These are the lessons you learn about life, right?

And even if you lose people in your life that you weren't necessarily close to, it still makes you think, right about life.

It still makes you think about just how temporary it all is, right?

And there's no better lesson, at least that I've been through to teach us about what life really is than when we lose somebody we care about.

So I want to get into a couple things on how I process this heavy grief.

And I think it's important because sometimes the simple things are the best things.

So for me, I didn't have breath work back in the day.

Breathwork is a huge tool for me now.

But I had meditation.

And even then meditation wasn't something that.

Was something I did consistently, but I did it.

And when I did it, I felt more at peace.

So what I would do and what I would recommend to you to do, if you've gone through loss recently or you will go through loss and that could be death, allow yourself to sit in the discomfort, give yourself a time window, allow whatever comes up to come up.

And then get yourself a journal or a notebook and start to write out your feelings and what's coming up.

You wouldn't believe how therapeutic it is to take what's in here and like all those crazy thoughts and get em on paper.

This journaling and whatever you want to call it, brain dumping, whatever has been the, probably the most important practice of my journey about gaining clarity.

So sitting and allowing things to come up, right?

But not always sitting in it, just giving yourself time, the space and then going, okay, time to reflect.

And then you reflect and then you'll be amazed what comes up.

Then I would recommend doing the things that you love to do that light you up.

For me, it's working out, going outside in nature, even if it's just a walk, doing things to move your body get out in the sun.

Get out in nature.

Do not drink alcohol if you're going through loss or grief.

I.

When I lost my younger brother, I was going through a major crazy party phase in my life, and I drank so much just to numb.

That phase of my life was insane.

And I just felt like I was always digging myself out of this hole.

And that's what you're doing with alcohol.

If you're going through loss or pain, alcohol is just delaying the process because eventually you gotta come back to being sober.

You're gonna feel worse, and then you still have to process the thing.

So why wouldn't you just allow yourself to process it now?

The more we hide from it, the more it sneaks up on you later, right?

Do the work, feel it, heal it, let it go.

Otherwise it'll stay in your subconscious.

It'll show up in ways and areas that you don't expect.

And the quicker that you can face it, look it in the eye, and process it, the less it has control over you.

Right?

Try and nourish yourself with good food.

I know when you're going through loss or grief, it's easy to eat the junk food.

And, like, I'm a big believer of the 80.

20, right?

Eat right 80% of the time.

20%.

Allow yourself whatever.

But just know when you're processing grief, the better you feel, the better your vessel feels, the easier it is to process it, right?

The shittier you feel, the worse fuel you put in.

The more booze, the more sugar, the more crap, the harder it's gonna be.

So do yourself a favor, set yourself up.

Because it's a tough road.

And so if you can control the things that you can control, it'll be easier.

Okay.

I hope this was helpful.

If you guys got value from this, subscribe to the channel.

I would love to hear your thoughts below.

If you did like that, I would love to hear your comments.

Yeah, I appreciate you.

We'll see you next time, my friend.