Category: Loss

What Can You Learn From Loss?

We all have loss in our lives. While we can’t control that loss, we can control how we react to it. We can learn from loss.

It is important to learn from our experiences throughout our lives. After all, the only way to grow and improve, is to learn from what happens to you. While it is possible to learn from your successes and from your wins, the opportunity for self-improvement is much greater from your failures and from your losses.

When you lose someone close to you, or someone who meant a lot to you, the initial inclination is to be sad. That makes sense. The person is no longer around to make you laugh. Or to inspire you. Or simply to sit and talk with.

However, there is a better way to honor their memory. When the person was alive, you learned from them. If you make a list — an actual, enumerated list of the lessons you learned from talking with, listening to, or watching them, it will help you feel gratitude that they were in your life.

That’s one type of learning. In addition, dealing with loss can help you learn about yourself. How do you react to sadness? How do you process grief? How do you commiserate with others?

Loss is a great time for introspection. What can you learn from loss?

Related questions: How do you deal with loss? When is is useful to fail? Why are people afraid of death?

How Can You Turn A Loss Into A Win?

In life, there are times when you experience a loss. How can you take the sting of that loss and channel it into a win?

No matter how successful you happen to be, there will inevitably be times where you experience a setback. Or maybe your life has more than the usual number of setbacks.

How you respond to these obstacles can be crucial. In fact, it can be the difference between long-term growth and stagnation. Being able to channel your pain, anger, misery and unhappiness into productive action is important. Even if it doesn’t bring about eventual success — and it might — it can help with your outlook.

Listen to a podcast where Michael and Lee discuss a related question: ‘How do you define success?’ We also discuss a bonus question: ‘Is happiness the most important purpose in life?’

Not that it is easy. A loss can be devastating, and it can leave you feeling powerless, even when you aren’t. It can sap your energy and your motivation.

So what can you do in that instance? Are there any tips that have helped you in the past? Are there strategies that you can think of that might help you recharge, in order to fight another day? And not just to fight, but to come out on top in the future?

How can you turn a loss into a win?

Related questions: How do you deal with loss? How can we turn sadness into constructive action? Why bother? What can you control? When is it useful to fail?

 

What Do You Miss?

One constant in life is change. And when things change, invariably you lose some of the things that bring you comfort or happiness. What do you miss?

The types of things you miss can vary quite widely. It might be a material object, like a child missing a favorite teddy bear.

Others might miss a person, like a particularly meaningful teacher, or a family member that is far away, or deceased. You might even combine a physical object and a person, like a shirt reminding you of your father.

Maybe you fondly recall your favorite meal at a restaurant that has since closed. Or attending a concert of a band that has broken up.

Listen to a podcast where Michael and Lee discuss a related question: ‘How can we maintain wonder?’ We also discuss a bonus question: ‘How do you think others see you?’

There are also more abstract things to miss. Maybe you wish you were carefree like you were as a child, before you gained adult responsibilities.

On the other hand, you might miss things simply because you have grown older. Do you remember when you were skinny, or had all your hair, or didn’t need glasses?

Adding to all of this, of course, are the restrictions that have been in place over the last couple of years due to the pandemic. Some of us haven’t been traveling, or spending time with friends or loved ones. Our lives have changed in many ways since we went into lockdown back in March of 2020.

So what is it for you: a object, a person, a memory of days gone by? What do you miss?

Related questions: Who do you miss? How have you changed? What was the best time in your life? What is the best part about getting older? The worst?

 

What Would You Do If You Lost Part Of Yourself?

Sometimes, from an accident or even just from simple aging, you might have lost a skill or talent you previously possessed. How did you handle that?

As you grow and mature into an adult, there are naturally things that you are good at. Perhaps that comes from natural talent, or maybe you develop skills through endless practice. Regardless of how you did it, these things may be important to you, and perhaps even a foundation for how you think of yourself.

What happens if that is taken away?

Listen to a podcast where Michael and Lee discuss the related question: ‘What makes you you?’ We also discuss a bonus question: ‘What gives a person value?’

As you age, you will have events of one kind or another. You might have a medical scare, or be involved in an accident of some kind. You might find yourself, rather suddenly, to not be able to do something fundamental to your ego.

Then, of course, there is aging. After a certain age, our bodies begin to wear out. Our eyes don’t see as well as they used to, we don’t have the endurance we once had, and it becomes oh so easy to strain a muscle doing even the simplest task.

What happens when someone who a fast runner suddenly finds everyone is faster than they are? Or if someone with 20/20 vision needs to get glasses in order to read? A person with a prodigious memory might have trouble recalling names.

How can you cope with this eventuality? How do you redefine yourself as your skills and abilities, mental or physical, change for the worse? What would you do if you lost part of yourself?

Related questions: What makes you feel old? How have you changed? What makes change possible? What skills have you lost due to technology?