Crushing Stress with the 5 Second Funeral Method
Listen to Crushing Stress with the 5 Second Funeral Method
00:02
Well, hello. Welcome everyone to another episode of Been There, learned that This is Dana Byers. I am here on a lovely Oklahoma Morning with a hot mug of a black coffee, and I cannot, cannot wait to talk to you today. But first I wanna ask you, are you in the mood for an interesting statistic, maybe an interesting statistic or two. Here they are, 90% of podcast don't get past episode number three. And then of the remaining 10% of podcasts around the world, only 90% of those podcasts make it to episode 20. Well, guess what, friends? Right now I'm in front of a microphone recording episode 20. How fun is that? This little glimmer of an idea that I think God just dropped in my brain last year, has turned into 20 episodes so far. I am so glad that we are on this journey together.
01:09
So thanks for joining me today. Now let's get down to it. Today I wanna talk to you about the power of the five second funeral. Yes, you heard me correctly, the five second funeral in 2022. I hired an awesome coach named Paige, and she taught me about the five second funeral. And you know how things go, like once you learn something, you start seeing it pop up everywhere. So I keep hearing about this and I'm like, gosh, there might be people in my network, people listening to the podcast, friends of mine, loved ones who have never heard about this. So I wanted to record an episode just about the five second funeral to introduce you to it, to tell you how I've used it and why it's gonna benefit your life. Okay, so just to briefly introduce the concept of the five Second Funeral, this is a tool that's gonna help you handle negative emotions whenever you're experiencing uncontrollable events.
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Hi, hello. That's life, right? Negative emotions, uncontrollable events. So this tool can, it kind of helps you prevent from getting stuck in the negative self, the negative self-talk or the blaming of other people's, maybe even avoiding interactions or avoiding people after something uncontrollable or something out of your hands happens. And it can really benefit you in several ways if you practice the five second funeral. First, it helps you with emotional regulation. If you use this tool, it's gonna help you regulate your emotions. If you're feeling maybe sad or guilty, you might feel angry or embarrassed or frustrated. And the five second funeral allows you to acknowledge those emotions, to recognize them without getting stuck in them so that you can have better emotional resilience and control. It also benefits you because it helps you with decision making. You know, I'm passionate about decision making. I love decision making.
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Some people who love me might say, it's my hobby if it could be a hobby. But the five second rule is so helpful with it because when we avoid ruminating and negative self-talk, we can make clear and more empowered decisions. So it helps us shift our focus back to the present moment and the goals and the things that we want to happen, the things that we can impact, the things we can influence, so there's less indecision. And it also, I think, minimizes our people pleasing tendencies. This is really important, ladies, when you listen to this, because sometimes when something happens that's out of our control, we feel uncomfortable. And our tendency, I'm speaking about myself here, our tendency might be to just want to please people and placate the things that are happening around us to minimize shame or discomfort. I also think the five second funeral is really helpful with our authenticity.
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That's a personal value of mine. I love the thought of embracing and processing our emotions without judgment. This is a skill that anyone can learn, that I've really been heightening a focus on improving since I became a certified coach. And I think it's so important to really focus on our authenticity and to look at things without judgment. Because it lets us make choices that are aligned with our authentic selves, rather than being impulsive or based upon what we think other people want. We can stop, we can pause, we can talk to God about it and be able to respond in a much healthier way than we might if we didn't take a five second funeral. And then finally, I also love the five second funeral because it reduces stress. I'm here for that. I don't know about you, I don't have a stress-free life, but I don't think you do either.
04:57
And managing our negative emotions effectively using the five second funeral can lead to reduced stress and anxiety. So we can kind of, you know, manage our daily challenges with a greater sense of calm and clarity. And it just improves our sense of our overall sense of wellbeing. I'm gonna share with you in just a moment how I was able to use this recently in a very real example in my own life. So just to tell you a little bit more about the five second funeral, I think some of the further benefits are just feeling empowered, knowing that when things happen that are out of your control, you still maintain a sense of control in how you respond. But your response is gonna be a reflection of how you feel. And that's why it's so important to really get to the heart of how you're feeling and to allow yourself to feel that way.
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I think the five second funeral improves our relationships because we're able to navigate difficult conversations or things that are said, you know, intentions, maybe misunderstandings, we can become more productive. This example I'm about to share with you of how I use this in my life dramatically increased my productivity on a day where the goal wasn't just to be productive, but it was to be present. And I think we have to be both. A lot of times that's the expectation for us, that others have for us, and that certainly that we have for ourselves. And so using the five second funeral helped me be present on a day where I otherwise might not have been able to. We increase our resilience and I'm, I love talking about resilience because I misunderstood it for years. Okay? I thought resilience was just grit. Just keep going. You know, white knuckling through things, almost forcing outcomes like I've just gotta get to the finish line.
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I don't believe in that definition of resilience anymore. And I hope that maybe you'll consider not considering that being the definition of resilience either. What I believe resilience is, is staying the course over a long period of time in a sustainable fashion. Okay? That's the caveat. In a sustainable fashion, that was a core reason. One of the core reasons I continued to burn out over the years of my career was because I was behaving in a way that wasn't sustainable. Either my ego was at the center of it, or I was ignoring my health, or I was ignoring my emotions, which is the opposite of what a five second funeral is. And so I thought I was resilient. Well, really, I was gritty, and I don't think having grit is a bad thing, but I think that grit just involves action and tenacity. I think resilience involves, yes, tenacity, but also intuition.
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A sense of maybe when to take a step back, when to lean in towards an activity and to be able to ask for help so that you can go in the same direction for a long time in a way that's sustainable. Okay, so that's my, I'll get off my soapbox about resilience and the definition of resilience and we'll keep moving forward. Finally, I think the five second funeral is a form of self-care. And while we're on definitions, let's talk about self-care briefly. Self-care is not getting a pedicure, in my opinion. Okay? Self-care is not out watching Netflix or scrolling on your phone. That's called buffering. That's where we are distancing ourselves from what we're truly feeling or the thoughts that we are having. I used to have a habit of buffering by going and grabbing a small snack outta the pantry. I would maybe feel some anxiety come on about the next call coming up.
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This was a few years ago, and I would feel some anxiety coming up and I was like, I'm just gonna go have a snack. I'm hungry. Well, really, I wasn't hungry. I was a little bit anxious. Whenever I learned to sit with my thoughts, they diminished significantly because I was listening instead of burying them. And so self-care be, we wanna be careful that we aren't defining self-care by the things that we do to escape from our lives. Self-care are the things that we do that support us living our lives in a fully present and authentic way. It could be exercise, it could be rest, it could be painting, it could be a variety of things. I recently bought a keyboard to return to my love for music that started at a very young age. And I had a stressful day a couple days ago, and I just took a break from a project I was working on, sat down, played to him, got back to the computer, and my brain had just somehow calmed down enough where the self-care of a little bit of piano playing got me back on track so that I could be resilient.
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Whereas in the past, self-care for me would've been running to the pantry or getting a soda or something else. It's not a problem to have a snack or have a drink like that. It's the intent of what we're doing. Okay, so there was another soapbox. Didn't mean to get on that, but I did. And I'm sharing that because I want you to look at the five second funeral as a tool that you can use for self-care as well. It is important for you to be able to understand these benefits so you can incorporate this habit into your daily life. It's gonna promote your personal growth, your fulfillment, your sense of purpose, calmness, and I believe even your ability to draw closer to Christ. So story time, a couple weeks ago, I was in a situation where thankfully after a couple years of practice, I decided it would be best for me to hold a five second funeral.
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So the quick context is I was driving from the north side of the city where I live downtown in a lot of traffic. And I was in an environment, there was some construction going on, and there was a semi-truck right to the left of me. And there was a semi-truck right behind me. The semi-truck behind me, I believe, did not know that our lane was about to end. And he was trying to pass me on the outside, the right outside of me, in a right hand lane. He was on the shoulder of the road. And I'm thinking, to be honest, what is this fool doing? There's some truth for you. I'm thinking, what is this fool doing? And I immediately realized, oh my gosh, we are gonna have an accident. I don't think this is going to end well. And then I thought, oh my gosh, this is it.
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And I know this is a very dramatic moment, but when I say this to you, I had an experience where I, the last thing I remember thinking was a text conversation with my kids the night before. And you know, I'm a question asker. I'm a coach. Before I was ever a certified coach, I was always curious, always asking questions. And so I love to reach out to my kids who are college age and just ask them questions. And I had asked them, what is something along the lines of like, what is a dream that you would love to fulfill in your life that I can support you in fulfilling? Something like that. And they had each given a really beautiful response to it. And those dreams, it was like they were already, I don't know, tattooed on my heart. And that's what I thought of when I thought I was gonna be crushed between these two semis.
12:31
I thought, I won't get to see those dreams happen in my children's lives. And it shocked me. But then I just felt this immediate sense of peace, this immediate sense of calm. And the last thought I had was, I don't think this is gonna hurt very long. I really thought it was the end. He, this driver came to his senses. Unfortunately, he had to overcorrect and recorrect a few times. I, to this day, don't understand how he didn't wind up in an accident. I don't understand how I wasn't crushed. 'cause I don't think my eyes were closed that whole time. It just really seemed I was gonna, I had nowhere to move, nowhere to go. I was gonna be trapped. And I was about five minutes from my destination. And so I remember just going, oh my gosh. I don't know how I got out of that.
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God just talking to him out loud in my car, which I frequently do. And I just couldn't believe it. So I kind of, you know, zoned out, arrived at the, the destination where I was headed. I had about five minutes before I had to run inside before the event started. And I had multiple events that day. I was heading to the first one in the morning. I had another luncheon after that, a client session that afternoon and an evening event with my husband and some friends. And I just sat there and went, oh my gosh, by God's grace, he reminded me of the five second funeral. Now, to be completely truthful with you, it was probably more like a five minute funeral because I had to take a minute and just inhale and exhale. And I sat there and the hot tears came to my eyes, rolling down my cheeks and just went, oh my gosh, God, I felt like that was the end.
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Thank you that I'm still alive. But as soon as I felt that, then I started feeling some other emotions. The not as fun emotions. I first thought, could I have done something different? You know, did, did I do something wrong? Was I at fault there? And then I very quickly went to feeling like a victim. Like, oh my gosh, that could have been horrible. He almost took away my kid's mom and my husband's wife and my parents' kid, and just all these things. And then I got angry. And you guys, this is a win for years and years and years. I've been afraid of really feeling angry about things. That's a whole other episode we'll need to talk about sometime, because a lot of high performing women struggle to allow themselves to get angry because it feels pointless, feels like a waste of time. And we don't wanna hurt anyone and we don't wanna hurt ourselves.
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And so I sat there and I honestly let myself get pretty steamed at this driver who made a very reckless decision that could have harmed me and possibly himself and other drivers on the road. And in that ability to feel that feeling that was so scary to me, I felt myself released from it. Okay? I felt myself experience the mourning, if you will, acknowledging that emotion without judgment, letting myself feel the feelings that if any of my friends were in the same situation, I would want them to process those feelings, give themselves permission to feel those feelings. So I gave myself permission to hold that funeral in my car and feel those emotions. And then, do you know what happened? I felt them release. I let it go. I was able to shift my focus back to a place of radical acceptance of what had just happened.
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Radical acceptance that I was still alive, gratitude, and then the ability to step into the meeting, to leave my car, to step into the meeting and the rest of my day, to be fully present. And that I think is, if you will, the magic in the five second funeral. Because when I say I'm was fully present, it wasn't until later that night that I said to my husband, oh my gosh, I can't believe I forgot to tell you what happened today on the road. This was nuts. I had been with him all evening. I'd had a phone conversation with him two hours after the near accident had happened. And it had never occurred to me to tell him. So I was able to care for myself in a way. By having that five second slash five minute funeral, I was able to care for myself and tell my body, I hear you.
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That was a big deal, but we are okay. I was able to hear that just like I would if one of my kids were little and came up to me and needed to process a booboo, right? Like, we can do that for ourselves as adults. And so acknowledging that emotion, giving myself just a few seconds, a few minutes to mourn what happened or didn't happen, and then to release it authentically, to feel that emotion leave my body was so powerful and so empowering. That's why I'm sharing this with you because I'm figuring this out later in my life. I'm thinking about people listening to this, regardless of your age, learning this tool, really practicing it and employing it and feeling a greater sense of freedom that money cannot buy. And here's why it works. It prevents us from ruminating and dwelling, getting stuck on those negative emotions.
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I'm not angry at that driver anymore, but I was for a little bit, for a hot minute. I was pretty angry. I didn't hurt him. I didn't hurt myself. I just allowed myself to admit how I felt. It also works because it allowed me to acknowledge and process, you know, those emotions without getting stuck in them and and not being able to be present in my meetings the rest of the day. And it promoted my desire to be resilient, you know, to give myself what I needed to, to function each day in a way that is sustainable, to have proactive problem solving as my approach to stress and things that I can't control in my life. So I wanna encourage you to think about the five second funeral. What can you learn from my story and from the way I've shared with you how to do this?
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What can you learn to be able to practice it? We don't become perfect and master five second funerals, we just practice it. You can use it, pull it out of your, you know, leadership tool belt the next time that you're experiencing something that was unexpected. It doesn't have to be dramatic, obviously, is the story I just shared, but you're gonna be able to have a five second funeral so that you embrace those emotions and let them go to have greater resilience and a greater peace of mind, but also so that you're able to be present with and to serve and lead those around you, your children, your direct reports, your loved ones. This is the power of listening to what you are thinking, to what you're feeling, acknowledging those, validating those, taking them to Jesus, making sure that you're able to process them and to recognize that you can do that in a matter of seconds and be able to go further faster in your growth and also in your performance just because you are taking care of yourself. Alright, friends, so glad we got to have another little chat today. I'll see you on the next episode.
