If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in half a century on this spinning rock it’s that you will be defined more by how you react to the downs in life than how you react to the ups. We all know what to do when things go our way. We celebrate. We relax. We feel good. For a while at least. But what are we supposed to do when things seemingly turn against us? I’d be lying if I said that I celebrated failures or other misfortunes. It is often said that winners celebrate and losers contemplate. Some people believe it’s that contemplation period that turns today’s losers into tomorrow’s winners.
I’ve come to understand that contemplation is a better approach to dealing with negative outcomes than almost any other reaction besides ignoring negative outcomes altogether. Often people fall into the trap of depression and (even worse) self-abuse when things don’t go their way in life. Examples of self-abuse include overeating, consuming alcohol or drugs and withdrawing from their lives. All of these things are forms of giving up on ourselves. I think that giving up in life, even for short periods, is always a shame because there’s almost always more that we can do to add to our own and others lives.
Whenever I’m stuck in my head on something that I can’t understand or can’t figure out I find that there is always one sure fire way to get perspective back. That way, is zooming out to the most general level possible. Regaining a grasp of the bigger picture in life is essential to responding to setbacks. One big picture concept that is important to remind yourself of is the following. Everyone fails at something or experiences negative outcomes some time. The belief that such outcomes are unique to us in our lives is something that causes people to despair. But that’s just not true! Sure, if you look around social media you’ll see lots of examples of people happy and winning. Rarely do people share their setbacks and if they do we usually don’t pay as much attention to those. I know it varies from person to person but I think that when we’ve experienced a failure we see other people’s successes even more, and we envy the heck out of those people!
One negative impact of social media is that it’s caused people to get away from talking to friends and loved ones. It’s so much easier to just comment on a post they’ve written or to direct message them. Heck, I don’t even receive emails from friends anymore! I find that when you talk to people you get the real deal about what’s happening in their lives, and that stretches far beyond what you see on social media. That’s why it’s critical for you to work on having people in your life with whom you can discuss and share your ups as well as your downs. Just the fact that you hear from someone you know things that have challenged their lives will make you feel less alone in your own misfortune. Also, don’t forget the power of talking to the people who are closest to you. One thing that I regret in the past when I was married was that when things were not good I would often say to my wife something like, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Another contemplative technique that I find helpful in navigating rough waters in my life is to investigate the situation. Investigating is an activity and activity can prevent you from wallowing in your misfortune. Investigation puts you in an empowered position instead of a helpless one. Great investigators voraciously seek out answers to questions. Some questions that you can start with are: Exactly what happened here? How could I have done things differently? What things did I do correctly in spite of my failure? How could things have been worse? That last question is a favorite of mine. Almost anything that happens to us could be worse and I find that sometimes considering how a situation could have been worse fills me with a sense of relief. Besides keeping you busy a thorough investigation can help you to create a plan to prevent what happened from ever happening again. Between the time you take to investigate your misfortune and the action plan that comes out of it you may just forget that you ever despaired in the first place.
Probably the greatest tool that you can have in terms of navigating the ups and downs of life is the understanding that good and bad times are a normal occurrence. When things are bad we tend to get into the mindset that they’ve always been that way. To paraphrase a favorite film of mine, Vanilla Sky, the sweet isn’t as sweet without the sour. Life, in many ways, is like the ocean. As a kid we’d go to the beach on the weekends in the summer and I learned to ride waves. The ups and downs of life are like waves. We can’t always predict when the waves will come or how big they will be, but we do know that they will come! My uncle taught me how to ride the waves into shore so they didn’t crash over me leaving me disoriented and in fear of drowning. Ride the ups and downs of life. Take control. Don’t let yourself drown in despair for there are many other important contributions for you to make and things for you to experience!
In The Midst Of A Journey 