When I was 11 years old, my parents gave me the bad news.
After months of searching for the cause of my mother’s increasing difficulty in keeping her balance and her frequent falls, she was finally diagnosed with a rare, incurable disease that would slowly paralyze her entire body.
Mom’s hand held mine as Daddy assured me the doctors would do everything they could to slow this monster’s progress.
Mom would get a pair of special crutches next week and some medicines that might help her. She would still teach nurses and direct the medical staff at the hospital where she worked.
“And we’ll still be the same happy family that we are now,” my dad said, the glimmer of a tear in his eye.
It turned out he was right.
* * *
We all encounter tragedies. Loved ones die. Accidents and disasters smash into our lives. We lose jobs, friends, partners, houses, health. We get betrayed. We fail.
But we’re a persistent lot, we humans. We go on, whether we have a taste for going on or not.
Happiness researchers Hicks and Foster in their book, How We Choose to be Happy, say the ones who made a promise to themselves to rediscover happiness after major life disruptions all used the same process to go forward. The authors dubbed this process “recasting.” I think of it as giving the dice a fresh toss.
Recasting Your Lot
In their world-wide interviews with hundreds of famously happy people, Hicks and Foster encountered many who had endured deep and wide-ranging tragedies in their lives. And all of them described how they had resurfaced by going through the same two-stage course of action.
It starts with their decision, in the face of crisis, not to be a victim, but a fighter.
None of us gets through life without facing our share of painful, sometimes devastating circumstances. When they happen, we’re faced with a choice: to give up or to go on. Healthy people choose to go on, even when they can’t begin to see how going on is possible.
The healing wasn’t instant for the folks who overcame their tragedies. In some cases, it took months or years for people to reconnect with happiness again. But those who succeeded in rediscovering a sense of meaning and well-being all processed their tragedies the same way.
The Process
The first thing they did was to allow themselves to deeply and honestly feel the emotions surrounding their personal tragedy. They allowed themselves to feel their anger, their rage, their sorrow, their grief, their sense of irrecoverable loss.
I’m sure that every one of them felt that they were victims in the immediate wake of whatever circumstance disrupted their lives. But none of them allowed themselves to be defined by what had happened. Each of them set an intention to regain a meaningful and satisfying life.
And it was that intention that gave them the will to go on. They activated it by looking for meaning, for an understanding of how their new circumstances fit into their lives—the second step in the powerful, healing “recasting” process.
They asked themselves a lot of questions and looked for sincere answers.
First they explored the question, “What’s the essential core of my feelings?” They wanted to get to the very heart of their feelings, to let themselves understand. Sometimes they wrote letters to others involved—often with no intention to mail them—or they wrote about their feelings in a journal, or talked into a voice recorder, or to a caring friend.
The richer your understanding of your feelings, Hicks and Foster say, the richer the meaning you can derive from the event.
The second step of their healing was to ask themselves things like:
What am I learning about myself from this experience?
What am I learning about the others involved?
About my relationships with them?
About my relationships in general?
What story am I telling myself about this?
Is it true? From what other perspective could I see this?
What’s a different story I could tell?
What’s the gift in this?
What new opportunities for the future can I create from this experience? How can I take action on them?
The turning point comes when you look your emotions right in the face and decide, “I can cope. I can work through this pain.”
It’s the willingness to face your pain that rescues you from the numbness of denial. It allows you to be authentic—honest with yourself—and in control. It reaffirms your centeredness and capability. And once you have those things, you’re more than half way to rebuilding a vibrant, satisfying, meaningful life.
Next week we’ll look at discovering new options for happiness, both now and when everything you once had seems to have disappeared.
Until then, I wish you a week free of trials and full of joy.
Warmly,
Susan
Image by sippakorn yamkasikorn from Pixabay