Don’t let the pain consume you, let it fuel you. The biggest periods of trauma are gifts from the universe.
During the year of the pandemic, I lost my marriage, my job, and my financial stability. I even shed a large number of friends. I thankfully haven’t lost anyone in other ways, but it’s been a hard year nonetheless. Most people would look at my situation with pity, but I don’t feel self-pity. Not at all. That’s because intertwined with these events of loss, I also woke up to my true purpose in life. I also learned that these things were gifts from the universe.
The things I lost were standing in my way.
Instead of wallowing in self-pity, I realized what was really going on, and I consciously chose not to adopt a negative mindset. I am going to tell you how you can do the same.
Have you lost something big recently? Have you been feeling like you’re hitting rock bottom, uncertain of how you’ll ever gain your stability or happiness again? It’s hard. I get it. You might be in a lot of pain, feeling anger or despair, and you might be unaware that there’s another way.
These events don’t need to dictate who you are. There’s a different mindset you can adopt to approach life with vigor and excitement, even when your present situation seems hopeless.
Grieve the Loss but Know It’s a Temporary State
You are allowed to take a day. Maybe several days, depending on what you’re grieving. You are in need of healing before you can step forward. Don’t let the pain consume you, let it fuel you.
When you face swelling of emotion and you run from it or you don’t know how to process it so you push it to the back of your mind, you are setting yourself up for disaster. It will follow you and haunt you — for years, possibly — until you finally face it. You might find yourself in a depressive state, feeling trapped as if you’ll never emerge from it again. I’ve been there.
There’s a different way.
You can let your feelings flow. You can let yourself cry, get angry, talk to yourself, etc. If you do this, you’re processing it. Did you lose your job? Take a day to be angry (without hurting anyone) and just yell, let it all out. Did your boyfriend dump you? Take a day to let the tears flow, take a bubble bath, and be kind to yourself and your tears.
The difference in these approaches is that one way, you’re giving yourself permission to feel, and you are in control. The other way, you’re giving in to the emotions. When you give in, you are no longer in control.
So, let the emotions flow, and tell yourself that after this interlude, you’ll be healed and stronger than you were before. Don’t let the fires rage, consuming you in a way that you have lost control of your life. Let the fires be your fuel to go on and live gracefully.
Consciously Choose to Respond Differently
I never liked being like other people. Ever since elementary school, I sought out “the road less traveled” and actively chose to respond to situations in surprising ways. I never liked to go with the crowd on anything. If I was surrounded by girls who talked about the Backstreet Boys, I’d purposefully talk about the Beatles just despite them, and even sometimes to disgust them.
So, when things happen in my life that involve loss, I step back and think about how I’m going to respond in a new way. In a way that no one expects. I just hate being predictable.
Humans have learned through patterns to respond in certain ways to situations. If you lose your job, people expect you to be sad, so they say “I’m so sorry to hear that.” If your relationship ends, you’re supposed to be sitting at home crying, right?
When we lose things, we are programmed to respond in a certain way. This is what’s often called the “software of the soul” because we are so used to taking certain actions in response to certain events based on memory. We get into a rut where we seem to have no choices anymore. But we do have a choice.
When we lose things, it hurts. The experience of loss is something we can’t control. Jobs, relationships, and money come and go. We aren’t in the driver’s seat for these events. But for internal events, we are in control.
You have the ability to respond in any way you choose to any situation, despite what any inner or outer voice is telling you.
Stop yourself and think about novel ways to respond. Shock the world by staying positive and finding the silver lining no matter what’s going on.
Understand That It’s All a Gift
While I was losing my job, and soon after my husband abandoned me, I realized it was all a gift. It’s hard to see this at the moment it’s happening. Your emotions might be blinding. People around you may be starting to behave a certain way, and you feel strange going against the current. But if you step back and look at the big picture, you might see something interesting.
Stepping back, I was able to understand my place in this universe. When my husband left, it took a day for me to wake up and see that there is beautiful life all around me, and a light flowing through all living things, which I wasn’t able to see before. When I lost my job, I was in touch with my intuition which told me that I had greater work to do in this life. It was all a blessing.
I recommend meditation as a way to reach deep within to find reasons. There’s a purpose for every event in this wonderful universe. Our souls move through experiences so we can all grow stronger. You can look deep into yourself and ask your intuition for the answers you seek:
Why did this happen to me?
Where am I going from here?
If you listen deeply and without expectations in the silence, you’ll hear the answers in your heart. They’ll be comforting.
You Always Have a Choice
To sum it all up, you have choices in which response or action to take when loss happens. Maybe that seems hard to believe because humanity is so used to responding to loss with sorrow, anger, and fear. But you know better. You know those aren’t the only available options.
Take time to let it sink in. It’s okay to initially step back after experiencing loss and regain your strength. You need to heal; everyone does. Don’t rob yourself of that.
Once you’ve healed and chosen your mindset in response, the last piece of the puzzle remains: seeing life as bigger than you. You’re on a journey that had no guarantees, but if you stop to value the wins and the losses as significant events in your journey of personal growth, you will more easily face loss. You’ll learn to look for the silver lining.
The divine in me recognizes the divine in you.
