I like this little video. It’s a good reminder about keeping perspective.
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Palo Alto and Bay Area therapist
by admin 2 Comments
I really believe that part of being resilient is learning to get perspective. To get a different perspective, actually. My client who is struggling with the recent death of her mother feels guilty because she would have spent more time with her mother if she had known when her mother was going to die. Her perspective currently is through the filter of extreme grief where, because she knows now when her mother died, she feels that she would have, should have, could have done more. In awhile, after time has passed, she’ll gain a new perspective. She will realize that she could not have known when her mother was going to die and that she actually had a very are rich and meaningful last few days with her mother.
Many of the people I have talked with who are dealing with financial grief of some sort tell me that perspective has helped them as well. They have found new opportunities after losing a job, a house, or other precious assets. New and more meaningful careers, a simpler lifestyle, and renewed gratitude for life just as it is are some of the gifts born from what seemed to be tragic losses. “I never thought anything good would come from my being unemployed, Bobbi,” one woman told me, “But my relationship with my husband has become so much richer. It’s because we have more time together now!”
Awhile back, I heard an amazing show on Talk of the Nation on NPR. They were talking with people who, because of the poor economy, were in difficult financial circumstances and had to be on food stamps for the first time in their lives. Surprisingly, many of them enjoyed the experience! “I think everyone should have to do it at some time in their lives,” one caller said, “I learned a ton about budgeting, buying healthy foods, and how to cook well.”
One more example: Shortly before my late partner died, I emailed friends and family that she was in a coma. My aunt wrote back and said, “Bobbi, I think Ruth is not in a coma, but a comma. Just a little pause in the journey before she continues on.” This new perspective brought me peace and even some joy as I contemplated Ruth’s “comma” before she passed on to the new part of her journey.
It’s really easy to think that our current perspective is the only one or the true one. But this limits our ability to enjoy new learning opportunities and seeing gifts where we thought there were none. We think a beautiful thing that has become cracked is now ruined. Yet, as Leonard Cohen says, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
by admin 3 Comments
The common understanding of the word resilience is “to bounce back.” We most often use it to describe a person or thing that has undergone stress and been able to come back from it well. While this general definition is true, there is more to resilience than just bouncing back: It’s also possible to move forward when life throws you challenges and roadblocks. Not only can you overcome setbacks, you can experience the power of positive transformation even in difficult times. This new iteration of my newsletter and blog, Bounce, is dedicated to helping you transform into your best self by increasing your personal power, purpose, and perspective.
Here’s what we’ll explore together in upcoming issues:
– What Happened to Grief and Caregiving? The Healing Power of Resilience
– The Triad of Transformation: Gifts, Wounds, and Trouble
– Your Core Gift As Superpower
– There Is A Crack In Everything: The Light In Your Wound
– “Come To The Dark Side, Luke”: Choice and the Nature of Trouble
– Change Your Mindset to Improve Your Resilience
– Ancient Initiation Processes in Everyday Life
– Your Heroic Journey: Increasing Resilience By Heeding The Call
And more! I’m excited to explore this new path of resilience with you! How about you? Are you ready to bounce ahead?
As I write this, we are fast approaching the Thanksgiving holiday here in the States. The season has me thinking about giving thanks and being grateful.
It’s pretty well established that gratitude is good for you. Leading gratitude researcher Robert Emmons has found that gratitude leads to stronger immune systems, lower blood pressure, more feelings of joy, and a greater sense of social connection, among many other benefits.
Guess what? One of the other important benefits is – you got it – becoming more resilient.
So let’s take a look at ways Emmons and others say we can generate more gratitude (and times when being grateful isn’t such a good idea.)
1. Stop and smell the roses. No, really. Smell them.
It’s not just the noticing of things we enjoy that creates the most gratitude, it’s the interaction with our senses that tickles our gratitude bone.
Inhaling the sweet scent of a rose, the ch-ch-ch of a sugar packet as you shake it, or the feel of cool water running over your fingertips helps you savor and appreciate your experience.
And now that you’ve smelled that rose, express your gratitude for it and the pleasure it’s given you.
2. Be grateful in a specific way to people.
It’s wonderful to hold gratitude for things such as roses and sunsets. But when it comes to people, it’s even better to be appreciative of specific things.
Tell your partner, “I so appreciate you vacuuming the carpet when I know it’s my job but you saw how exhausted I was from work this week.”
Say to your friend, “Thanks for asking me for coffee today when you noticed I was feeling down.”
Share with your child, “I love how you share your delight in all of these bright stars in the sky with me here tonight!”
3. Think about death and loss.
Okay, this one may not seem like a lot of fun, but it is very effective.
It’s easy for us to take things for granted – weighty things such as our own lives and the lives of people we love and less consequential things like the joys of chocolate or coffee or texting your best friend.
Thinking about your own death or the loss of a loved one helps you become more grateful for the life you have and for the relationships you enjoy.
And it’s not just a theory, says the Greater Good Science Center’s Jeremy Adam Smith.
“When you find yourself taking a good thing for granted, try giving it up for awhile,” he suggests.
Picture not having chocolate or coffee or – heaven forbid! – not being able to text your friend for a week.
Feeling more grateful for those things already, aren’t you?
4. Be aware of ideas of entitlement.
Do you find yourself feeling like people owe you something because you’re “all that and a bag of chips” as one of my clients says?
Robert Emmons writes, “Seeing with grateful eyes requires that we see the web of interconnection in which we alternate between being givers and receivers. The humble person says that life is a gift to be grateful for, not a right to be claimed.”
5. Remember hard times.
As I’ve often written here on Bounce, perspective is an essential tool of resiliency.
It can also generate more gratitude.
Just recalling tough times in your life helps you see that you made it through that period to get where you are today – which is one thing to be grateful for – and hopefully allows you to have some gratitude about where you are right now.
6. Don’t make gratitude a chore.
In an interesting study on happiness and resilience, researcher Sonya Lyubomirsky had one group of subjects write a gratitude journal three times per week and one group journal one time per week.
Who felt happier and more positive after the study? The group who only kept a gratitude list one time per week.
It seems that gratitude can become a chore if you think that you have to write a list more than one time a week.
Maybe you don’t even have to write a list. But you do have to be conscious and intentional about feeling grateful.
7. Graduate-level gratitude.
Dr. Emmons: “It’s easy to feel grateful for the good things. No one ‘feels’ grateful that he or she has lost a job or a home or good health or has taken a devastating hit on his or her retirement portfolio.”
Jeremy Adam Smith writes: “In such moments gratitude becomes a critical cognitive process—a way of thinking about the world that can help us turn disaster into a stepping stone. If we’re willing and able to look we can find a reason to feel grateful even to people who have harmed us. We can thank that boyfriend for being brave enough to end a relationship that wasn’t working; the homeless person for reminding us of our advantages and vulnerability; the boss, for forcing us to face new challenges.”
Amie M. Gordon, writing for the Greater Good Science Center, wisely points out that gratitude isn’t always appropriate.
1. Feeling grateful for someone who isn’t worthy.
Gratitude isn’t going to help in a relationship that is abusive or just plain wrong for you.
In fact, looking for the positive aspects may just keep you in an unhealthy situation for longer.
2. Avoiding problems through gratitude.
Gratitude helps us get our minds more centered and off of the little things that natter at us on a daily basis.
But, if we always “look for the bright side” and ignore the seriousness of an issue, we may very well get ourselves into more trouble than if we take a realistic view of the problem.
3. Minimizing yourself through excessive gratitude.
There are things you do well. Very well, in fact.
Give yourself credit for these things rather than using overwrought gratitude to appear humble. It’s great to give others kudos for their hard work, but don’t forget about your own!
Finally, here’s a great infographic that sums up a lot about gratitude:
What’s your take on gratitude? Have you ever used it in an unhealthy way? What helps you remember to be grateful? I want to hear about it in the comments below!
This post is based on several wonderful articles posted at the Greater Good Science Center website:
Six Habits of Highly Grateful People, by Jeremy Adam Smith.
Five Ways Giving Thanks Can Backfire, by Amie M. Gordon
How Gratitude Can Help You Through Hard Times, by Robert Emmons
What Gets in the Way of Gratitude? by Robert Emmons
The Greater Good Science Center is extremely cool. They send out a newsletter every once in awhile that is chock full of positive stuff based on research. I think you should subscribe. (No, I don’t get any kickbacks from the GGSC. I’m just really grateful for the good energy they put into the world.)
I also mentioned Sonya Lyubomirsky (don’t try pronouncing that at home) and this is the reference:
Lyubomirsky, S. & Della Porta, M.D. (2010). Boosting Happiness, Buttressing Resilience: Results from Cognitive and Behavioral Interventions. In J.W. Reich, A.J. Zautra, & J.S. Hall (Eds.) Handbook of of Adult Resilience (450-464.) New York: The Guilford Press.
Infographic courtesy of the John Templeton Foundation.
by Bobbi 4 Comments
I am the Queen of Tunnel Vision.
Case #1:
I want to find a branch of my bank near where I’m running errands, so I pull into the parking lot of a small shopping mall and consult my smartphone. It gives me an address that seems very close.
I pull out onto the street, make a u-turn to go in the direction I think the bank is, and as I pass by the shopping area where I was parked, I see the bank in the same parking lot.
It was directly behind where I had been parked, but because I was focused on finding the nearest bank, I didn’t look where I already was.
Case #2:
I’m at the gas station and I want to use my fuel rewards/grocery savings card to see if I can get a discount on gas. I shoot my card in and out of the slot quickly, only to see the display tell me that my card isn’t registering.
I know the magnetized stripe on this card has not worked in the grocery store slots, either, and I always have to ask the cashier to scan it for me.
Nonetheless, I continue to pop it in and out of the slot at the gas station, hoping the reader will be different than the ones in the grocery store.
No luck.
I insert the nozzle and start pumping gas at the regular price. I look around idly and my eyes fall again on the gas pump.
This time I see it. About twelve inches to the left of the card-reader slot is a scanner with a sign that has a large arrow pointing to the words, “Scan your fuel rewards card here!”
Sigh.
I was so focused on the card-reader slot and only the card-reader slot, that I was not able to see anything else on that pump.
I rest my case for being the undisputed Queen of Tunnel Vision.
Although these incidents are harmless and give me some amusement at my own expense, they also serve as a good reminder for me to be more aware of my tunnel vision syndrome. If I do it while looking for a bank or pumping gas, it’s quite possible I’ll do the same thing when a much wider perspective is needed.
When a problem arises or one of life’s storms blows in out of nowhere, having an extremely narrow view tends to keep us locked in on one component of it.
For example, when my late partner was diagnosed with cancer, my first reaction was to focus intensely on the cancer itself. What was it? How could we cure it? What were the best things for Ruth to eat? What was the most effective treatment?
These were all good questions to ask, but if I had remained fixated on only the disease itself, I would have missed something very important: the journey that surrounded the disease.
It was Ruth who first gave me the nudge that widened my vision. One day at a bookstore, she held up a book by Lawrence LeShan called Cancer as a Turning Point and said, “I think this is the answer. We should take a spiritual approach to my cancer. We don’t need all of these other medical books.”
That simple shift in focus brought many wonderful experiences to us. With our eyes off the cancer and looking about us, we noticed how many people truly loved us.
We saw the miracles that occurred each day in the ordinary: the flight of birds in the sky, the simple pleasure of friendship, the joy of laughter between us.
There were times when tunnel vision returned. When Ruth became very sick from her treatment, it was hard to focus on anything other than how to get her better. But even then, we learned to allow a simple, loving email from a friend to gently jar us loose from our fixed view and remind us that when life is at its hardest, there is beauty and love on the fringes.
If you’re a member of my Royal Court of Tunnel Vision, here are some ideas on how to broaden your view:
1. Notice when you are in the tunnel.
This takes some practice, but the next time you find yourself stuck on a problem – whether it’s where to put your fuel rewards card or figuring out how you’re going to pay your mortgage next month – stop for a moment. Ask yourself, “Am I entertaining all solutions or am I stuck on just one? Do I need to step back and look around me? How else can I think about this?”
2. Practice looking at things from another vantage point.
I love to read self-help books and I was completely caught off guard a couple of years ago when I decided to read Roger Van Oech’s A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative.
I don’t know what possessed me to read it since it wasn’t technically “self-help,” but I’m forever glad for that possession because it has turned out to be an invaluable asset. Through games, puzzles, and stories, it teaches you to look at life from a different angle.
I had innumerable “Oh, I get it!” experiences that not only made me see how very narrowly focused I was, but also gave me tools and ideas about how to widen my approach to everything from word puzzles to life problems.
If you can’t read the book, practice opening your viewpoint with these activities:
– When you’re in your car at a stoplight, look around you rather than at your smartphone or radio. See what is next to you on either side and then look all the way behind you.
– Try a few crossword puzzles. Crossword clues are intentionally designed to fool you by using words that usually mean one thing but can mean another. For example, the answer to the clue, “Render powerless?” is unplug. The answer to the clue, “Pain in the rear” is backseat driver. Get it?
3. Ask others for help.
When we are in the tunnel, it’s easy to think that it makes up our entire world. All we see and know is the dark, curved walls around us.
Maybe we need a little light to help us see that we’re in a tunnel, not in the real world. A friend can do that for us. Ask a friend to help you brainstorm ideas and solutions for the problem you’re facing. The old saying, “Two heads are better than one” is quite true in this case.
4. Look where you already are.
Sometimes we have what we need around us and we can’t see it. Just like when I was sitting in my car but never saw the bank right behind me because I was too focused on my smartphone.
Take a deep breath and look around you. Is there someone who can help you navigate this storm in life? Have you made it through darkness before and can use those same skills and attitude now? Is there still faith within you that there is a light at the end of this tunnel?
5. See if there is something on the fringe you are missing.
Just as Ruth and I found beauty and love on the fringes of her cancer, see what you can find around your problem. The only thing you’ll find in a tunnel is darkness.
Look for the light, my friend, look for the light.
How about you? Are you a member of my Royal Court of Tunnel Vision? What helps you to expand your view?
Let me know in the comments below!
by Bobbi 29 Comments
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. ~ Confucius
By now, you know how life works.
We stand up and we fall down again, just like a toddler learning how to walk.
There are many ways to pick yourself back up and I’m presenting you with 55 of them to get you started.
Use one or two that you like the most or mix and match to your heart’s content.
Text in this color means that it is linked to a helpful article on that topic so make sure to check it out.
Okay, go get your bounce on!
1. Accept the reality of your situation. Face the facts – it’s happening.
2. Realize that change is always going to be in your life. Expect it.
“I always thought things would calm down and get easier. I’m beginning to think that’s not going to happen.” Phoebe Howard, age 99.
4. Be nice to yourself. Treat yourself as you would your best friend.
5. Remember that everyone has flaws. Everyone. You’re a part of the human race so you’re bound to make mistakes.
6. Practice mindfulness by noticing your thoughts and feelings, but have no judgment about them.
7. Resistance is like a Chinese Finger Trap. The more you struggle, the tighter you’re held in the trap.
8. Be flexible and open in your way of thinking. It will allow you to problem-solve more effectively and accept your reality more easily.
9. Have a tribe. Social support is absolutely essential in bouncing back in life.
10. Talk about your difficulties with trusted friends and family members. You don’t have to tough it out. Talk it out instead.
11. Let go of judging your thoughts and feelings. Just notice them. Read Taming Your Gremlin.
12. See if there is a gift hidden within your troubles. The sand that irritates the oyster eventually becomes a pearl.
13. Develop post-traumatic growth. The basics are being optimistic and framing your struggles as meaningful (finding the gifts and opportunities in them.)
14. Look at problems from different angles.
15. Remember that you’ve made it through tough times before. And you’re still here to talk about it.
16. Instead of wasting energy resisting what’s happening in your life, accept what is and use that energy to enjoy the good things in your world.
17. Think about kaleidoscopes. The pattern is beautiful, but when it gets shaken up, a wonderful new pattern can emerge.
18. Take a break.
19. Find something that makes you laugh really hard.
20. Have a mentor. Find someone you trust and admire and use them as your go-to person for advice, support, and guidance.
21. Remember that your thoughts aren’t always true.
22. Remember that it’s okay to have fun, smile, and laugh sometimes even when you are in the worst of situations.
23. Just because you struggle with something doesn’t mean you’re not resilient. It means you’re human.
24. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone.
25. Sometimes things really do suck. No one said you have to like the difficulty in front of you.
26. Look up. Get out of your head and actually look up from time to time. What do you see that you didn’t notice before?
29. Practice acts of kindness.
30. Once a week, write down what you’re grateful for.
31. Take action to solve the problem rather than just ruminating about it.
32. Stop ruminating.
33. Savor the good stuff. The next time you see a beautiful sunset, stop and really see it.
34. Don’t resist.
35. Drop your struggle against change. We want to feel like we’re flexible and open and yet, when change arrives, we resist it as though it were the devil.
36. Do what is in front of you.
37. Embrace your shadow. We all have a dark side – don’t run from yours.
38. Remember that falling apart means you can put yourself back together any way you’d like.
39. Express yourself. Don’t try to stuff your negative thoughts.
40. Focus on the positive rather than predict the negative.
42. Distract yourself from your troubles for awhile. Healthy stuff only!
44. Remember that this is how it feels today. It won’t be like this all the time.
46. Remember that Suffering = Pain x Resistance.
47. Adopt a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset. See failures as opportunities to learn rather than unmanageable setbacks.
48. Believe that life is meaningful. “Those who have a ‘why’ to live for can bear with almost any ‘how.’” Frederich Nietzsche.
49. Don’t take things personally. That’s what pessimists do. You’re trying to be an optimist, remember?
50. Increase your creativity to be able to improvise solutions better. Read A Whack on the Side of the Head.
51. Be willing to grow.
52. Let it go.
53. Stay away from shame. Watch Dr. Brene Brown’s Tedx talk.
54. Change what you can, accept what you can’t.
55. Breathe.
Which of these works best for you? Or do you have other ideas that I may have missed?
by Bobbi 32 Comments
I broke into tears when I told my partner that new information indicated that many of the children killed today at a school in Newtown, Connecticut were kindergartners. Five years old.
Friends on Facebook posted about their shock and grief and prayers sent to the families affected by the horror.
President Obama had to pause for twelve full seconds during his short address to the nation, right after he said, “The majority of those who died today were children — beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old.” Looking down, he brushed tears from his eyes.
My tears had just dried only to start again when I went to research something for this post and saw that Google had placed a tiny, somber candle underneath their search bar. Hovering my cursor over the candle, I read the words that faded into view: “Our hearts are with the families and community of Newtown, Connecticut.”
So say we all.
It seems to me that there are three pressing questions that we now face:
How do we manage our grief?
How do we get perspective on this?
How do we make sure this never happens again?
Much has been said today about the parents who rushed to the school to desperately look for their children.
In near-panic, they burst into the secured firehouse and scoured the faces in front of them, hoping to find their child.
Most of them, thankfully, did.
Twenty sets of parents did not.
Our hearts break for them.
But it is not only these parents who face the ravages of grief and shock.
Death has touched so many more. The brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins. The playmates and friends.
The kindly crossing guard who knew each of her charges. The cashier at the supermarket who knew that father and his son. The former students who lost a beloved principal and, possibly, favorite teachers.
The grief spreads from person to person like water finding its way across a cracked and dry desert. First in rivulets but then, as those rivulets merge together, the water becomes a stream and then a river. The grief of the parents becomes the grief of Newtown becomes the grief of a nation.
Just last week I wrote a post on the absolute and utter pain of grief and how, sometimes, you just have to go through it even if it means being knocked to your hands and knees.
And I hate it – I hate it – that so many people are on their hands and knees now.
But, as Shauna Shapiro said, “We accept our experience not because we want it, but because it is already here.”
This experience, this tragedy is here. Let grief run its healing course.
If you are surprised by the intensity of your grief right now, realize that your reaction is completely normal. How can you not grieve the senseless loss of so many young children? How can you not think, “There, but for fortune, go I?”
Death is a part of our common humanity as is the grief that accompanies it. You are sharing in our collective sorrow.
Do what you need to do to process your feelings. Perhaps it helps to talk about Newtown with a friend. We’re having a discussion on Facebook – join us there. Maybe it helps to write in a journal about how this tragedy reminds you of your own losses.
Perhaps you could create a small ritual to honor your own grief and those of your brothers and sisters in Connecticut. Light a candle. Write “Newtown, Connecticut” on a slip of paper and put it in your Bible or hold it against your heart or tuck it under your pillow.
Trauma
If you are feeling vicariously traumatized by the events in Newtown, make sure you take care of yourself. Create a space where you feel safe both physically and emotionally. Talk to trusted loved ones about your feelings.
And breathe, remember to breathe.
As you breathe in, allow the place in your body that is feeling anxious to soften. As you breathe out, let go of any judgments you are having about yourself.
This is an excellent time to practice self-compassion. You may want to take advantage of Kristin Neff’s wonderful guided meditations on her website, especially “Soften, soothe, allow.”
Anger
Acknowledge your feelings – all of them. And that includes anger.
A friend of mine emailed me and strongly encouraged me to write this post, to step up and do what I can to help.
I sent her back an expletive-laced email that exploded with anger. Not at her, but at the gunman and the situation.
I felt better afterwards.
Anger is an extremely common aspect of grief and a very normal reaction under circumstances like these.
Acknowledge it, honor it, but don’t let it overwhelm you.
We’ll talk later about productive ways to use your anger.
Resiliency research has shown that being able to provide meaning to adversity is an essential part of being able to bounce back.
This usually involves finding a positive aspect, some silver lining to a crisis. Maybe a new opportunity arises in one area of your life when a bad thing happens in another. Or maybe the crisis begins to make sense later when you get a bigger picture of the time frame in which it occurred.
It’s going to be hard to find a silver lining here.
How do we make any sense at all of a senseless act?
Maybe we don’t right now.
Remember that meaning-making and perspective take awhile. It’s part of our human tendency to chew on things for a bit before we figure them out.
As Amy wrote on my Facebook page tonight, “I want to be in touch with my sadness and be aware of my feelings around the tragedy. I’m not ready to move on. I want to feel connected to this event as I try to make sense of what the Universe intended.”
It’s okay to not be able to figure this out yet. It’s hard because we so want to understand, we want for it to make sense. Our brains are struggling with this contradictory data that they’ve encountered.
For now, try to soften around this urge for meaning. Like Amy, allow yourself to feel connected to your feelings and the event itself, but let the meaning-making happen naturally.
I think, though, that there is one thing we need to solidify rather than soften.
Columbine.
Virginia Tech.
Aurora.
Newtown.
No more.
The time is now.
We must not – cannot – turn away from this again.
An article in Mother Jones, accurately and sarcastically called “A Guide to Mass Shootings in America,” lists 61 – now 62 – mass murders by gunfire since 1982.
Our resiliency individually and as a nation relies on working together to solve problems.
We can blame things on Congress, or the President, or oil companies, but it boils down to what we do. What I do. What you do.
We must not let opinions about guns and gun control divide us.
As President Obama said, “We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years. And we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”
This is the time we must unite despite our differences. We must find an answer to the terrorism of gun violence.
This is the time for compassion, empathy, and action.
If you don’t agree with your neighbor on the solution to gun violence, remember that he deserves as much compassion as you do because of your very humanity. Put yourself in his shoes and understand that he is taking responsibility for his beliefs as you are for yours.
Practice mindfulness by staying with the current issue and adopting a non-judgmental stance with people who don’t agree with you. You can disagree and still be loving and kind.
And be practical. Allow your anger to energize you to action, but don’t post vitriol on Facebook. Post ideas and solutions.
All of us, no matter our opinions on guns in America, must act now before there is more bloodshed, more grief, more trauma.
Write your Congressperson and tell her you expect action to be taken on a federal level to address this issue. Call your Senator and tell him the same thing.
Have a conversation with your friends and brainstorm how you can affect the process.
We have to figure this out. It has to stop here.
Do it for yourself.
Do it for our country.
Do it for the children.
It’s important that we talk about this. Let me know what you’re thinking and feeling in the comments below.
Other resources:
For a great start in processing this, see Sarah O’Leary’s terrific post “Is There Love Even Here?”
For tips on how to talk with kids about the tragedy.
Please do join us on Facebook to keep talking, processing, and problem-solving.
Awhile back, I spoke at Stanford’s Help Center on the topic of financial grief. I’m not a financial advisor, of course, so I wasn’t able to help with stock tips or interest rates. I was talking about the particular kind of grief that comes along with this type of economy: sudden and unexpected loss of assets and the emotions that follow.
One woman in her early seventies shared that she and her husband were retired but had lost their savings in a Ponzi scheme. Now both she and her husband have returned to work; not something they pictured doing in their “retirement.”
A man in the audience said that he was facing foreclosure on his house. An unexpected loss for him, he said, in Silicon Valley’s “culture of success.”
Is it true that people can actually grieve over lost money, houses, and jobs? Yes, and here’s why: any kind of loss – any kind of loss – can trigger a grief reaction. Think back to when you lost something important to you. Maybe it was a pet, a relationship, a car, or your favorite project at work. Did you experience any of these emotions?
How about any of these thinking patterns:young woman grieving resized 600
Or these behaviors:
This is just a partial list of the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors that are a part of the grieving process. If you remember living with some of these when you had a loss, you were likely experiencing grief.
We’re accustomed to thinking of grief as something that occurs only after a loved one dies. The problem with this is that we tend not to acknowledge our feelings as grief when we lose something other than a loved one.
So, can we really grieve over losses brought on us by the economy? Absolutely. But even in these tough times, there are ways to develop resiliency and not only bounce back, but thrive.
Financial loss is not only about money. It probably wouldn’t be so devastating if it were. Here are just some of the other losses that come along with a sudden drop in assets:
The abrupt alteration of your Life Script, changes in your lifestyle and housing, and shattering of dreams for yourself and your family all magnify the emotions that surround financial loss.
Still, since we can see that all of this adds up to a BIG LOSS, why is it so hard to express grief about finances? What is it about this type of grief that is different than the emotions we feel when we lose someone we love? Well, there are some complications:
So, it really is pretty complicated, isn’t it?
Surviving . . .
1. Acceptance
2. Build and use your support system
3. Get a different perspective
And thriving . . .
4. See what you can learn.
5. Find the gifts.
Getting your bounce back after financial loss may not mean getting your money or assets replaced, but it does mean learning to survive – and thrive – in the most difficult times.
Will you take this as an opportunity or a defeat?