Bouncing Back from Adversity

Every day, the president at work sends out an email (or sometimes three) with a thought by a certain public speaker, Lou Tice. Usually I read the title and delete it without actually opening the email. But the thought this morning caught my eye.

When adversity strikes, whether it be loss of your job, an illness, a natural disaster or when you take a big hit that really knocks you off your feet for a while, how fast you get up again depends on a number of things such as:

· How good your support network is,
· How solid your self-esteem is,
· The extent to which you believe that you can control your own destiny, and
· Your experiences of overcoming adversity in the past.

If you want to shorten the time it takes to get back on your feet, try this:

· Ask yourself how it will look when you no longer have your current problems.
· Spend time visualizing yourself in that picture and imagining how you'll feel.
· Do it over and over, day after day, week after week.
· List your strengths and past accomplishments and add to that list on a daily basis.

At the same time,

· Set and prioritize some immediate, short-term goals to improve your situation.
· Write a detailed plan of action for the top three, including day and time.

Once you've accomplished a few short-term goals, you may feel ready to do some long-term visioning and goal-setting. Finally - and this is important - no matter how much you've lost, take time to help someone else who is struggling. Even the worst adversity can be used to learn and grow.

I appreciate the line 'even the worst adversity can be used to learn and grow'. When the same negative experience happens time and time again, you'd think that we would learn from it. I think we definitely grow from it, but man! I have a hard time learning my lessons. Why do I make the same dumb decisions? How does the line go? "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Like my post last week, I will try my best to stay positive and focus on the good. And to take the lessons that I have learned to heart...(again - because obviously they didn't sink in the first time).

As much as I would love to wallow and feel sorry for myself, listening to Patsy Cline and Celine Dion (and all of the other female crooners out there who sing about heartbreak/love/being a woman), last night was my night to do that. (Thank you, Elza and Megan, for listening to my hateful words and especially thank you to Megan, who puts up with my music and my crazy talk.) Time to bounce back and move on to bigger and better things.