What I Didn’t Know about Bouncing Back after a big Failure — Case Study

Few years ago, my material life changed dramatically.

We lost all our stuff. We couldn’t pay a loan taken for our business and were kick out of our home.

It was hard.

But I had my family besides and it made the whole trial to feel bearable.

After losing the business, I didn’t know what to do.

It took me 3 years to be able to see everything clearly and bounce back.

Highs and Lows

There were moments when everything looked like a fresh start. Few days in a row I succeeded to tap into flow states and started different projects. Yet the hope in a better future never lasted more than a week.

Then came the turn of depression.

It used to start smoothly. Never arrived with all forces at once.

At the beginning there were some small insignificant negative thoughts.

Disbelief showed its ugly head: How long would it take to re-build what I lost?

Once this thought crossed my mind, I had that overwhelming feeling of stuck.

If I lost my house which was made in two generations, how long could it take to have a new one?

You need a life to build a house. And I wanted to earn one in a few years?

My daughter isn’t a kid anymore. She’s already a teen. In three — four years she will go on her path.

I and my hubby cannot get started to build careers as employees. It’s too late for it. We aren’t able to take loans anymore.

So, how could I be so foolish to think there’s anything to be done to re-start our lives?

Often times I had been coming to the conclusion that there’s nothing we could do to bounce back.

Then I continued to survive from day to day without any clear future target.

After few weeks of bathing into the negativity and depression, a little sparkle of hope appeared again to make me change my mind.

An article I read or a story coming from the news re-fired my belief in possibilities.

It was followed by a new chain of better days. I had been working, researching, and making decisions and written commitments. I felt great, inspired and motivated.

But the good time stayed only for a few weeks.

Then, disbelief came back bringing its whole set of negativity with.

I balanced between these ups and downs almost three years of my life.

Why I couldn’t stop falling

Meantime we really hit rock bottom. We lost all the stuff amassed in the last forty years: all the furniture, books, kitchen stuff, bed linen, my daughter’s toys and little memories, and the carpets and other things I inherited from my parents.

We couldn’t pay the rent for four months and the owner obliged us to leave keeping all our stuff to cover the debt.

The more time passed from the day we had been kicking out our home, the less motivation I had to recover and the less the belief in the possibility of recovering.

When you’re hit by a crisis which pushes you toward bottom, you have to gather all your forces to bounce back immediately. Otherwise, your determination to overcome the troubles diminishes day by day.

And you lose the opportunity to use that force able to push you back on track.

I didn’t realize that on time.

Letting disbelief and negativity gain ground and hijack my mind, I didn’t take advantage of that power.

And I let opportunities pass me by because I didn’t believe there even exist any chances for us to bounce back.

Hence, all this time I didn’t follow any clear direction.

My short periods when I tapped into the flow eventually went nowhere. Each time I did scattered actions. It was like I had been laying the ground for different houses without finishing anyone.

Often times I felt like a bird in a cage.

I knew that I still could do things. I knew I had the capacity to work and create something important.

Yet I wasn’t able to stick to any single idea.

I had so many options that I couldn’t take a decision. And I had all the time in a day at my disposal.

No time constraints during the day.

The inability to take a decision is worse than getting into a bad situation.

To survive and thrive, we have to take decisions. To chose a way or another.

I didn’t choose anything to do. Rather I chose to stay in uncertainly and lose my power.

The Denial

Though, I didn’t assume the victim role up to the end.

All this time I played positive. Like nothing happened.

I was in total denial.

When talking to people I said everything is okay and we’re going better and better. I behaved as the problem was completely solved.

But it wasn’t. Everything went worse and worse.

I was plunging deeper and deeper wondering if there’s really a bottom there.

Nor even the moment when we left the rented apartment with some stuff gathered in a suitcase to take shelter in a friend’s place was the bottom for me.

I continued to deny everything, like I was sedated.

Deep inside myself I knew that everything continues to fall apart and I wasn’t capable to stop it.

I woke up in the morning and went to sleep at night with one question in mind: What can I do?

But I couldn’t find the solution.

There were too many options and no success guarantee for anyone of them.

That was my problem.

I stayed paralyzed in indecision, tormented inside and wearing the mask of ‘nothing happened’ outside.

I lived in a vicious circle which was growing bigger and bigger.

Not being able to find a clear answer, I did nothing.

We lived from day to day with the money made by my husband working as an executive driver.

Some days we were starving.

And I was prisoner in the trap of not finding a solution to make enough money fast.

The Awakening

All this time I prayed asking God to give me an answer. And one day, when I least expected, my prayers were answered.

This entire struggle suddenly stopped when I read an article. A simple yet mind blowing article. (I’m sorry I didn’t keep it)

The idea that hit me was that if we want to find a solution to make more money, we have to look at what we’re doing daily.

Because our income mirrors our daily actions.

The impact this idea had on my mind was stronger than losing all my stuff.

It was like someone punched me and all at once I woke up from the trance I was in.

During all the time I struggled in doubt and uncertainty, I still made some money resulted from the short whiles when I worked.

My problem was that I worked without building anything to the end. Each time I left a foundation to start another one hoping that the new one might be the solution.

In a way, I recognize I became addicted to beginnings. I loved that feeling you have when you start from scratch. Like so, I avoided the hassle of persevering into something.

It is easier to begin always something new then to stick to an idea until you succeed to validate and execute it.

I have gotten started many times but I didn’t’ have the tenacity and the endurance to go further at least one time.

I was afraid of suffering.

I was so committed to deny the bad situation I was in, as I refused to assume any struggle at all.

Even the necessary struggle required to achieve something.

Without realizing, I have been asking the wrong question. It was exactly the question which had an impossible answer: How could I make enough money fast?

I wanted easy money because I wasn’t willing to suffer anymore.

The day I made the connection between what I’m doing daily and my income was a huge aha moment.

And I could see my small income reflected from all my scattered actions.

It was liberating.

In a few days I knew what I had to do and started my business.

Now I know that if I’m doing every day the right actions money comes.

It would have been here until now if I’d had the power to make this choice from the beginning.

I lost a lot of time in indecision and deceiving myself that I need to find an easy way to turn around my situation.

I made three big mistakes:

1.I didn’t take advantage when I hit rock bottom to use the force of its depth to bounce back. I waited too much to chose a direction and make a commitment. If I were able to follow a direction, I would have shortcut my path to finding solutions to my problems and have avoided all my inside torment. And I would have had much more money now.

2.I put the wrong question. I asked myself “How could I make enough money fast to help me turn around the situation in an easy way?” instead of asking myself “Which steps can I take daily to let money come into my life?”

3.I avoided to face the situation pretending that things aren’t so bad as they seemed to be. My denial delayed the solution to my problems for three years.

Our lives are permanently a matter of choice.

What I have been doing all this time it wasn’t that I didn’t make a choice.

I made a choice, but the wrong one. I choose to not make a commitment. I was afraid to commit.

I choose to aim for easiness instead of assuming the necessary effort to succeed.

What you try to avoid, finally finds you. And it is not so scary as it seemed to be.

The thing is that life is putting us on trials. Successful people never avoid facing them.

They avoid crises by embracing change.

And, when a crises hit, they immediately step aside their comfort zones and use the opportunity to take their lives to the next level.

It took me three years to get it.

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PS You can find me on my blog, Pass To Riches where I’m writing about entrepreneurship, startups and business mindset.