The art of handling reversals of life is more glorious than temporary successes.

But life, as we know, is always unpredictable. No matter how carefully you plan, things can still go wrong. Anyone can be stricken by the reversals of life – there are no exceptions. Be it investing money in the market or investing our emotions in relationships, as long as we are in this world, we are bound to experience an unpleasant gap between our desired expectations and the actual results. The more vested interests we have, the more we will be prone to get agitated with the results.

Fundamentally we, as humans, have different levels of hunger such as physical, mental, and spiritual. For us, it’s not only about “How can I survive in this world?”, but it’s also about “How much do I matter in this world?”. We all have the desire to achieve things in life; at the same time, we also have a desire to contribute to the lives of people who matter to us. 

We all long for a sense of belonging and safety, and being valued, etc. Thus, we strive hard to fulfill various expectations that are driven by the world within, and the world around, us.

Somehow, we all want to be successful in everything that we do and, certainly, none of us plans to be a failure. We research, we learn and try to develop things that lead us to achieve success in our life. Nevertheless, the nature of this world is such that we may not succeed in everything we do, and we cannot be successful every single time. Moreover, just becoming successful once never feels like enough. Thus, the struggle to maintain success goes on for a long time to come. 

In a practical sense, though, we are prone to face failures more than success in our life. We may expect many things to happen based on our efforts and yet, we may end up experiencing heart-breaking reversals. 

Let’s list out a few simple and major reversals/failures that we face in general, in spite of all our sincere efforts.

• Academic failures – Failing to secure an expected rank in a competitive examination 
• Entitlement reversals – Not receiving promotion or increment that you truly deserved
• Financial crises – Losing a job due to a recession or incurring huge losses in business 
• Relational storms –  Misunderstandings and separations in your personal and professional relationships
• Bodily rejections – Facing rejection for your appearance or social status 
• Natural calamities – Loss of property or loved ones due to natural disasters or accidents etc.

There could be many more that one can think of based on their experiences in life. 

But, this is nothing new or unheard of. We all know there will be many facets and factors beyond our control that will mock at us throughout the journey of our life – with pain and suffering, inevitably, lurking around the corner.  

Therefore, we have to know and learn how to build the strength to handle such hard times in our lives and to quickly come out of our ordeals without losing much of our enthusiasm or energy. 

Henry Ford said, “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently.”

Hindsight affords us the ability to know, in the present, as to what could have been done in the past, but we lack the ability to effectively combat the present in the present itself. 

There are plenty of proven methodologies and philosophies that can enable us to deal with our hard times. Based on time, place, and circumstances we might have to choose what works best for us. However, the following are some of the deep-rooted points that we should be conscious of before we figure out a mature solution that we believe can work in dealing with reversals in our life.

Deep humility:

Due to confidence in our abilities and attachment to results, we tend to become blind to the fact that ’we are finite beings and we cannot control the outcomes entirely”. This blindness gets us angry on ourselves or blames others for the undesired outcomes. Deep humility means ‘to be consciously aware of our real position’. Humility also means accepting that “I do not know everything, and I cannot know everything. Thus, I can only do that which is in my control.”

Devotional re-interpretation:

When things go wrong, we try to analyze as to what went wrong, and the reasons behind it. But sometimes we cannot see anything logical or convincing about it. To make things worse, more often than not, our mind overestimates the impact of the failure by its own vicious interpretations. So, we need to train ourselves to see everything from the perspective of the ‘divine will’. Believing that “some higher power which is orchestrating my destiny might have better plans for me” will enable us to calm ourselves down, and give us the vision to see the hidden good in the bad as well. 

Diligent re-alignment:

Like a hot rod has to be put in water to cool, we need to keep our agitated mind in the hands of someone who can understand us and give us proper guidance to re-align ourselves and put us back into action more intelligently. Otherwise, we may end up making faulty decisions that can ruin things further.

We will always have very limited control over manipulating the circumstances in our life but we can always have immense control over stimulating our consciousness to deal with the circumstances of our life. If we are really determined to make our lives better then we need to master the art of handling our reversals in the most effective way.

Thank you.

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