How Do You Bounce Back When Life Gets Hard?

1. Disappointment in people you thought or expected more of.
2. Disappointment in circumstances not changing.

We see #1 letdowns all over social media, and there are so many people offering great advice and support that I’d only be adding to the choir if I was to say that sometimes people suck but we can forgive and let go or forgive but suffer on and stay close, believing in the best possibly outcome down the road … but that person might never change. Bouncing back and staying cheerful in #1 is impossibly early on unless you’re made of stone. We all need time to grieve and process, and that can take a long time. Eventually life returns to a new normal and we start choosing joy again.

Letdown #2 is easier to come back from, IMHO, because the heart is less involved. Yes, maybe you didn’t get that job or that car or that house or that big move to the beach house in Antigua, but your heart isn’t ripped to shreds because you didn’t expect that thing to make your heart feel whole in the way you expect relationships to. And because life is filled with decades of possibilities, the possibilities of the years to come are wide open.

This is where hope comes in.

Your ability to bounce back depends on how much hope you have for the circumstances to change in the future and how much of that hope you can pin on other regular-Joe stories of people making new decisions and forging new paths to accomplish the things they wanted earlier but for some reason didn’t get.

It’s been oft repeated that you lose some opportunities because something better is on its way. That’s bullshit most of the time. You’ve lost something. Maybe you’ll never get that one particular thing again. But nothing is ever wasted. Each time you lost something you wanted, you’ve come closer to knowing exactly what you do want and what you’re willing to settle for.

But there are so many “things” in the world! So many lovely, good things are possible when we make new plans, new decisions, wait a little longer, save a little more.

Some people wait decades. But all those things are still possible.

They just involve work and hope and patience and some occasional pixie dust or Jesus juice and kind people. And at some point, all those things converge into that beautiful moment when that thing is yours, and you look back years from that moment and you know it was worth all the frustration and sadness and loss because you are in the place in life you knew was worth fighting for.

Back to the original question — you never have to be cheerful, but choosing joy is always a more enjoyable, brighter way to live than skulking around in a dreary world because that is all you choose to see when you think you’ve lost the only thing worth living for.