recovering from failure

You are reading this because you have experienced some kind of failure in your life, whether it be the failure of a business or a relationship… Maybe you lost your job or some kind of competition. You feel like shit! You may not even be able to look at 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 self-reflection to begin the healing process. Therefore, you will not only 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 made good trips and had nice things; we were having a great time!

Then the economy crashed and took us with it. When things started to collapse, 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 ran 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, to no avail. We had to go out of 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 were not prepared. My spirit was as low as it could be. I was physically ill! I gain a lot of weight trying to eat my guilt feelings. When I got up the courage to look in the mirror, I swear I looked 10 years older.

The guilt I felt over this massive failure consumed me. I was ashamed, I withdrew from the world.

The good thing was that my husband and parents never blamed me for our accident, but I had enough guilt for all of us and then some. So I ate until I couldn’t stand it anymore.

So I started crying; lamenting the loss of my parents’ livelihood, ours and our house. He had put so much love and work into that house. I thought we would grow old together there; create so many memories there together. Our neighbors were amazing and it seemed like an almost perfect situation for us.

Now it would be gone, along with the embarrassment of having to file for bankruptcy. For as long as I can remember, I had always been taught and practiced “You make a bill, you pay a bill!” Filing for bankruptcy was what other people did, not us. Well, that pride soon faded in the face of the reality of having no other choice. So I had to get out of the bind I was in so I could gather all the paperwork the bankruptcy attorneys needed. While I was doing that, I started searching the internet, looking for meditations and prayers that could help me stop this pain I was in. I found paper books, audio books; YouTube Videos – I made great use of our community library and found a lot of things that helped me. I hated how I felt! I kept thinking to myself, “I’m a soldier!” “I grew up with foot soldiers” “Weakness was no longer an option!” This is what I learned from my time in the military. He had to figure out how to change the way he saw things. So I started looking at the things I still had, instead of the things I had lost.

I was healthy, I had a great husband who loved me, we went through 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 also very supportive. They shared whatever resources they had with us.

I also realized that this was not the worst thing that had happened to me. I had already survived the WORST thing that had ever happened to me; what it was like losing a wonderful husband in a car accident and sustaining life-threatening injuries that nearly took away my independence. I got over THAT, so I could get over this!

I kept devouring inspirational books, etc. I simplified everything! What was not essential was sold. The things I couldn’t sell, I donated to someone who could put them to good use.

And as I continued to do this, I had the wonderful revelation that the world kept turning and life went on, albeit differently. We still owed the IRS money after it all fell apart 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 away our property, but there was none! I suddenly realized how liberating it was to have nothing more to lose!

Then I started keeping a gratitude journal again, giving thanks for the smallest things, like having money to buy food or a nearby parking spot at the store. A playdate with my new niece (those days were especially helpful!) I had finally started to climb out of the bottomless pit I’d fallen into. Sure enough it had a bottom and I was on my way to the top!

We got a job and started to rebuild our credit and so on.

I learned to look at experience because of what it taught me about how things change and how all things can be changed through perspective: look at the positives rather than the negatives; How to recover from the pit of despair and continue to do so, when not, if you sink back into a funk.

Wake up every day CHOOSING to be happy, without waiting for it to appear; Know that the gift of life is worth being grateful for every day. Be thankful for that one thing, if there is nothing else you can think of on any given day to be thankful for. Gratitude for that one thing can cause a shower of things in your heart to give thanks for.

The beauty of life is being able to learn from every experience and live a life without fear; that circumstances in life 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 a book I read by John C. Maxwell called “Failing Forward” says, it is a choice that each of us has to make.