You are reading this because you have experienced some kind of failure in your life, be it the failure of a business or a relationship … Maybe you lost your job or a competition of some kind. You feel like shit! You may not even be able to face yourself in the mirror. You are kicking yourself; thinking that if you had done something different then you would not be where you are now.
Well, having been exactly where you are now, it will take some time and personal reflection to begin the healing process. So not only will you feel better, but you will also learn to see your situation from a different perspective than you do now.
I speak from experience. At one point in my life I had a beautiful house; he owned a business that had been doing quite well for many years; my family and I were doing nice trips and we had nice things; We were having a great time!
Then the economy crashed and dragged us with it. When things started to fail, I did everything I knew how to do to try to save the business, which was the only source of income in our household for both my husband and me, because we worked it together. And to make matters worse, my parents worked in the business with us and their source of income was also in jeopardy. I clung to every “life raft” I could see, but to no avail. We had to close the business, file for bankruptcy, and give up the house we loved so much. We had no income prospects and my parents were forced to retire for which they weren’t prepared. My spirit was as depressed as it could get. He was physically ill! I gain a lot of weight trying to eat away my feelings of guilt. When I had the courage to look in the mirror, I swear I looked 10 years older.
The guilt I felt for this enormous failure consumed me. I felt ashamed, I withdrew from the world.
The good thing was that my husband and parents never blamed me for our accident, but I was at fault enough for all of us and something else. So I ate until I couldn’t take it anymore.
Then I started crying; mourning the loss of livelihood for my parents, bear and our home. He had put so much love and work in that house. I thought we would grow old together there; create so many memories there together. Our neighbors were amazing and it seemed like a near perfect situation to us.
Now it would go away, along with the embarrassment of having to file for bankruptcy. Since I can remember, I have always been taught and practiced “You make a bill, you pay a bill!” Filing bankruptcy was what other people did, not us. Well, that pride soon faded from the reality of having no other choice. So I had to get out of the mess I was in in order to gather all the paperwork that the bankruptcy attorneys needed. While doing that, I started searching the internet, looking for meditations and prayers that could help me stop this pain that I was in. I found paper books, audiobooks; YouTube Videos – Made great use of our community library and found many things to help me. I hated the way I felt! I kept thinking to myself: “I am a soldier!” “I was raised with infants” “Weakness was no longer an option!” This is what I learned from my time in the Army. He had to figure out how to change the way he saw things. So I started looking at the things that I still had, rather than the things that I had lost.
I was healthy, I had a great husband who loved me, we faced things side by side. My parents did everything they could to help, including encouraging me to get up and dust myself off! They said they would be fine. The rest of my family was very supportive as well. They shared the resources they had with us.
I also realized that this was not the worst thing that ever happened to me. I had already survived the WORST thing that had happened to me in my life; which was losing a wonderful husband in a car accident and suffering life-threatening injuries that nearly took away my independence. I passed THAT so I was able to get through this!
I kept devouring inspirational books, etc. I streamlined everything! What was not essential was sold. The things that I could not sell, I donated them to someone who could take advantage of them.
And as I continued to do this, I had a wonderful revelation that the world kept turning and life went on, however different it was. We still owed the IRS money after everything went wrong and I made sure to contact them and make payment arrangements so they wouldn’t try to put me in jail! LOL!
They kept threatening to take our assets, but there were none! I suddenly realized how liberating it was to have nothing to lose!
Then I started keeping a gratitude journal again, giving thanks for the little things, things like having money to buy food or a nearby parking space at the store. A play date with my brand new niece (those days were especially helpful!). He had finally started digging from the bottomless pit he had fallen into. I actually had a bottom and I was going up!
We get jobs and start rebuilding our credit and so on.
I learned to look at experience for what it taught me about how things change and how all things can be changed through perspective, looking at the positives rather than the negatives; How to bounce back from the pit of despair and keep doing it, when not if you sink back into a funk.
Wake up every day CHOOSE to be happy, not wait for it to appear; Know that the gift of life every day is well worth being grateful for. Be grateful for that one thing, if there is nothing else you can think of on any given day to be grateful for. Gratitude for that one thing can spark a lot of things in your heart to be thankful for.
The beauty of life is being able to learn from each experience and live a life without fear; that life’s circumstances will always be there to try to crush your spirit, but you have the power to choose. You can let them defeat you or you can improve thanks to them. Failure is part of life, but as I said in a book I read by John C. Maxwell called “Failing Forward” it is a choice that each of us has to make.