Sometimes, you would lose so much in your life that you would wonder how to rebound from there. The ability to bounce back from failures would make you powerful in the face of difficulties. Can we rebound after losing everything? Some people do, and some people don’t. Let us try to learn how can we bounce back from extreme adversity.

Life is difficult. For some of us, it is more difficult than it is for others. There are times in some of our lives when we lose everything- our personal relationships, and our careers. What do we do then?

Is there a way to bounce back after having lost everything? If there is way, what’s that way?

It is difficult and that must be said. However, it is not impossible. You will struggle to find your back, but you will find your way, if you stick to it, with the determination not to fail. After all, your life depends on it.

Let us together look at how to rebuild your life after losing everything.

1. You are alive so you haven’t lost everything yet

Hey, you haven’t quite lost everything.

You have your life and you have had some experience with it. You didn’t have that experience when you were starting out. The fact that you are alive means you can do something to get yourself back out of the rut you find yourself in.

You haven’t lost everything yet. Reframe the situation and get back on your feet again.

2. It may turn out to be the best once you rebound

Nah, I will not tell you that everything always turns out to be the best because that’s bullshit. People die of cancer and communicable diseases and there is nothing good about that. However, many a time in life when life offers us lessons to grow in our journey through pain, we emerge both stronger and better as people.

Your bottom may turn out to be a life changing opportunity for you.

3. You have the opportunity to start afresh in a better way

Henry Ford said that Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

Consider the fact that not many people get the opportunity to start again. They make mistakes that they cannot rebound from. They find themselves stuck in a horrific death trap and they can’t do anything about it. You have an opportunity to start intelligently, with all the awareness you have now. Obviously, you find yourself in the situation you do, because you did make bad calls and judgements, but you have learnt your lessons and you can apply those lessons to create a better and a more fulfilling life. It’s better to start from a clean slate than to fix a mess.

4. You haven’t lost your belief in yourself

One of the most powerful things in the world is self-belief. People who have achieved great things in any field in the world have had a tremendous amount of self-belief. You may have lost money or relationships, but you haven’t lost your self-belief. If you continue to believe in yourself, you would be able to put your life back on the track. It’s only a matter of some time.

5. You know what you love so you can bounce back

Late Steve Jobs mentioned in his speech that when he was fired from Apple, the company that he founded with Steve Wozniak, he was devastated. But then, he realized that he still loved what he did and that had not been taken away from him. He loved entrepreneurship and went on to found Pixar and other ventures which led him back to the helm of Apple.  

It is a great story to realise that if you love what you do, you can rebound back to life, no matter how devastated you are.

6. Read the lessons, to rebound

The other name of failure is lessons. In everything that seems like a failure at the facade, there are immeasurable life lessons that could move you to a higher state of existence. There is a beautiful quote that says that lessons will be repeated until they are learned.

What appears to you as a failure or a terrible situation has seeds of lessons that you would be able to employ in your life and create a beautiful life, which may not have been possible if these lessons didn’t occur.

7. Financial problems are not permanent

If you are a hard working person and have lost your money because of an unforeseen calamity, you would be able to make money again in future because you have a history of hard work, and persistence. You may need to borrow money in the short-term, but you would be able to pay it back, and rebuild your financial life. Losing money is not losing everything. You can rebound and build everything again.

8. Find who still supports you

There must be some people who believed in you and your journey. There must be someone who felt you were headed in the right direction. Even if you were headed in the wrong direction, there must be someone who has seen you for a long period of time who would be willing to let go of your recent judgement and invest in you emotionally or financially because they know you are reliable. You need to find that person or those people who you think would believe in you, even when you feel that you are at the rock bottom. You need help to rebound back to life.

It is possible to go alone, but when you are trying to rebuild your life, any support would matter to you.

9. Set goals, reset, rebound

Since you are at the rock bottom and you don’t want to stay there, you would need a plan to work on. You would need timelines and the definition of what you need to achieve by those timelines. It is difficult to make goals at this point when you feel low and bottomed out, but it’s at this time that you need goals more than ever before.

10. Work really hard

Hey, you are at rock bottom and getting depressed about it won’t help. You need to work as much as possible to get your life back on track, and rebound to the amazing you, you used to be. Sleep when you fall and get up, and get back to work. Nobody needs to work harder as much as you do.

If you have suffered a professional setback, get down and work on staging a professional comeback by working hard on your piece of work. If you have suffered a personal setback, you need to decide what you want. Do you want a new relationship or do you want to be by yourself for a while? If you need to find a new partner, that’s work too. Get down to it.

If you have suffered both a professional and a personal setback, you need to divide time between both your personal and professional goals and work really hard.

Get so busy that you don’t have the time to feel sorry for yourself.

11. Understand that feeling sad about your situation will not improve it

Frankly, the title of the point explains the point. However, to elaborate, feeling sad about the situation and lying under the pillow if you are left with one would not help the situation. Cry if you must and you must. It would help to make you feel lighter. But, once you are done crying, revisit point number 10 and get back to work.

12. Life is a roller coaster. You go down and rebound

Remember that life is a roller coaster. It goes up and down. If you are at your rock bottom, it will go up and it is on you, unlike in a roller coaster to make it go up. Do not waste time in wondering why life is a roller coaster, because that’s how it is, and that’s what we have been given to work on.

13. Rebuild better

Since you are at a point when you have to rebuild your life, do not rush into the process. Haste makes waste. You have an opportunity to build a new home, literally and metaphorically. This time, build better so that the house doesn’t fall again, and you do not have to rebuild again in future.

14. Take care of your mental health

When we are down, it takes a toll on our mental health. If you don’t take care of your mental health, your physical health will suffer as well, since it’s all related to each other in the sphere of health. A healthy mind lives in a healthy body and vice versa. Build strong mental muscles so that you can withstand anything that life throws at you.

15. Assess your loss

It is easy to exaggerate your loss in your mind and the bigger you make it feel, the bigger it would seem. Be realistic about your assessment of your loss. Like we started by saying that as long as you are alive, you haven’t quite lost everything and that is true. Be realistic and honest about your assessment of where you are, and move on working from there.

16. Ask for help

It would be foolish to not ask for help. It is a difficult time for you when the roller coaster of your life has gone down, and you need help. Do not try to save yourself from the fast current of life by yourself. Shout for help. Somebody may be willing to help, and that would make your job of saving yourself and surviving this difficult phase a little easier. Once you are out of it, you can pay back your benefactor.

17. Embrace optimism

Yes, it sounds difficult to be optimistic at this point. However, pessimism hasn’t rewarded anybody in life. You need to count your blessings when you are at rock bottom because even there, you may find something that you are grateful for.

Even at this point, you could be grateful for the opportunity to be alive, to be able to have the confidence you have in your ability, your self-awareness and your belief in yourself to get yourself out of any adversity.

18. Pray, and rebound. Do not stay down

To start with, I am an atheist and I don’t pray myself. However, I have seen for people who do believe in a higher power that prayers do make them feel better, no matter what the circumstances be. So, if you are a religious minded person, get back to your prayers, and wish for things to get better, while you work on them. Anything that makes you feel emotionally stronger is a good idea at this point.

19. You don’t have a choice

Think about it. Do you have an alternative but to do whatever it takes to improve your life? You don’t. If there is a way, figure out a way, whatever it is, and whatever it takes to get yourself out of the hole that you are in. You can’t just stay there and feel sorry that life lent you a bad hand, and bask in the glory of failure.

Falling down in life is not a sin. It’s fine. Staying down is sin.

20. The only way is up

The good news is that you can’t go any further down from where you are. You already hit rock bottom, and you can only go up from here. So, dust yourself up, and start moving. When you move, you would only go higher because there is no way to go lower anymore.

Life is difficult. For some reason, for some of us, it is more difficult than it is for others. When you hit rock bottom, you would need to rebuild your life and the way to rebuild your life is to believe in yourself and work hard. The only way from rock bottom is up.

Thank you for reading.

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I appreciate the time you spent in reading the blog and wish you happiness.

Love,

Amarvani