What will make your life go so much more smoothly on a day-to-day, year after year basis? What will decrease the pain during the harsh, cold winters of your life and increase your joy in the sweet, flowering springs? A simple realization and acceptance that loss is a natural part of life.
Loss includes anything ranging from ‘I got stuck in traffic, received bad service at a restaurant, or somebody disagreed with me’ to the big losses like job loss, divorce, or death. Trust me when I say that if you overreact to the small losses, you will be thrown for a loop when the big losses occur!
We all enjoy our lives when times are good. We enjoy things so much, in fact, that we don’t fully appreciate them. It is human nature for us to take things for granted – and quickly! When a loss occurs, however, we react as though it shouldn’t be happening! Really? Why not? Who said that our lives here on earth are supposed to be all good, all the time? No one. But isn’t that sometimes how we react?
Please know that I am not in any way trying to minimize the pain of losses. I have sat and cried with clients as they’ve expressed the pain of the losses they’ve experienced. I have also suffered losses both big and small in my own life and I will admit that I shamelessly and literally squawled like a 2 year old through all of it. Somewhere along the line, when we don’t get the message that loss is a natural part of life, we operate as though we can avoid it! So when losses occur, as they do with every last one of us, we have to first deal with the contradiction between what we believe (loss shouldn’t be happening) and the real and painful loss we are experiencing. We are stuck in the ‘Denial’ phase of grief for far too long.
Growing up, everyone pushes us to win, but where do we learn how to lose? Learning how to lose, however, prepares us for real life. We will all experience loss at some point. When a loss comes our way, we can either seize up OR take the loss as a natural part of life and roll with it. None of it is fun stuff, but it is HOW WE DEAL with losses, big and small, that determines whether our overall life will be calm and peaceful or fraught with chaos and drama. If we seize up, as if the loss shouldn’t be happening, then we will remain stuck in that place for quite some time. If we recognize that loss is a part of life, then we will feel the pain (grieve), learn what we need to learn from the loss, and eventually adapt our lives going forward accordingly.
How does this increase your joy, you ask? If we don’t understand that loss is a natural part of life, we are so wounded by each setback that we live our lives constantly tense, guarded, and terrified of the next blow. When we accept that loss is part of life, however, we can relax and trust that we will recover and the flowers of our life will bloom again!
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