When You Are Busy…But Grieving
What happens when your to-do list is jam-packed – but grief from national news prevents you from focusing and getting anything done?
What happens...is that you are responding as a human being. And it means your brain is responding appropriately. Neuroscience tells us that information gets processed at the emotional level first.
Our emotions are the gateway to learning.
The brain prioritizes survival and safety over executive functions - such as focusing and planning, organizing information.
As the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio famously said: “We are not thinking machines that feel, rather, we are feeling machines that think.”
While this information may challenge the productivity of your day, it also lets you know that you must make time to feel, grieve, and process. You are biologically wired to feel first, and then do.
I encourage you to take the time you need to grieve, connect, and process. True, your productivity may not be the same when you take this time, but when you are ready to connect again, you will feel clearer. This makes not necessarily a more productive human, but a healthier human.
Our workplace model needs to incorporate room for grief and emotion to help support a more humane society.