By Steve Beseke, beseke1@earthlink.net
No matter how successful we become in life, all of us must deal with life and career setbacks – great and small. Examples might include losing a job, ending a long-term personal relationship, losing a loved one, or being shut down by your boss after presenting “the next greatest idea” at work.
We cannot get around it: Sooner or later all of us will face an opportunity to test our personal and professional resiliency. To successfully adapt to such moments, I have learned we must show some patience and understanding – in ourselves.
From personal experience of recently losing my dream job because of the country’s economic mess , I just wanted to get back “in the game” without worrying about my emotions. Because of being a gamer, I forgot to deal with the emotional loss in a much more thoughtful way.
I felt so much personal pain thinking that if only I would have… Or, why didn’t I do this or that… Instead, I needed to rationally look at what I needed to do next. After I realized this, and thought through the grief stages below, I saw how successful I am and will stay in the future. That is one of the main reasons I began this blog: To share my resiliency successes and offer you a chance to tap into yours. I also have begun my own corporate communications consulting business, including being a motivational speaker on career and life resiliency. It has been very interesting so far!
While emotions cannot always be seen, they always can be felt by those of us experiencing pain or loss. I wanted to just jump back into life rather than thinking through the typical stages of grief. Finally, I looked through Dr. Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief and I began to recover my confidence and resiliency to move forward.
If you are going through a setback right now – large or small – I’d suggest you think about the following grief stages and face what I did. When you shed all the layers away, I found that life is very special and we cannot worry about things out of your control.
Here are Kubler-Ross’ grief stages that has helped me recover my confidence to near-normal levels:
- Denial (this isn’t happening to me!)
- Anger (why is this happening to me?)
- Bargaining (I promise I’ll be a better person if…)
- Depression (I don’t care anymore)
- Acceptance (I’m ready for whatever comes)
As I’ve said in previous posts, life is full of ups and downs. How we react to challenges will determine the scope – and for how long – it will takes to recover. Once I realized this and faced up to the grief stages, the faster it took my to recover from my tearful loss.
Now it is your turn. Please use my lesson the next time the door shuts for you. Because remember: It will always open to a side better and more prosperous.
Until next time my friends…