What Are We Made Of?

Life throws us curveballs, and sometimes we strike out. We strive for success and try to get by, but sometimes things don’t go our way. Disappointments are an unpleasant and potentially devastating part of our experience, and as we languish in the rubble of our hopes and dreams, it can be difficult to see a way forward or imagine a happy ending to the story. But despite soul-crushing setbacks, the only viable choice is to keep going as best we can, to enshrine everything that happened today and yesterday into the history books, and to focus on tomorrow.

Of course, we have other choices, just not good ones. We can give up, forsake our dreams, abandon hope, and wallow in our misery. We can stop believing in ourselves, turn our backs on the world, and indulge in self-pity. We can become embittered, blame others or our own bad luck, engage in self-destructive behavior, or simply do nothing. There are times when this path can be tempting, as it is, at least initially, more accessible and much easier to envision than some others.

Alternatively, we can eschew the very concept of goals, focusing instead on being in the moment. We can remind ourselves that disappointment only happens when reality doesn’t measure up to our expectations, and that happiness comes from letting go. There is value in reevaluating our goals and asking ourselves whether the problem was the target we had set for ourselves rather than what we accomplished. There is value in realizing that very little in life is truly important, and in learning how to just be present and aware. And yet, we might still yearn for something else and miss our hopes and dreams.

If we choose to, we can also pick ourselves up from the floor and soldier on, more determined than ever, tenacious and unrelenting. We can expand our perspective and put our disappointment in context. It’s not the first time that things didn’t go our way, and likely not the last either, but tomorrow is another day, full of opportunity and promise. Henry Ford built a successful automobile company after a string of failures. J.K. Rowling was rejected twelve times before finding a publisher for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. We are made of tougher stuff than we know, and like many before us, we can overcome and prosper.

How can we draw upon those reserves of strength, hidden below layers of doubt, disappointment, and pain? We can start by recalling times when we succeeded in overcoming odds and transcended setbacks. If we did it then, we can do it again. We can pay close attention to what we say to ourselves, repeating positive affirmations rather than battering our souls with negative messages. And then, we can try to take one small step forward, some tiny action, that will dislocate us from the depths of our despair and rekindle our hope. Life can be tough, but so are we.