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No matter what you are recovering from, whether it’s the end of a relationship, the death of someone you love, substance abuse, an unexpected firing, financial reversals, or extricating yourself from an unhealthy entanglement, it is likely that you will have setbacks.
I know this because I have been grappling with setbacks myself. I was healing well from a broken back and was planning short trips when the first setback happened. A physical therapist gave me the wrong exercises and I was flat on my back again, in excruciating pain for over two weeks.
When I crawled back onto the wellness track it was smooth sailing until another physical therapist unknowingly gave me the wrong exercises. Another two and a half weeks of wrenching pain.
When it ended I was back in healing mode. Until it happened the third time. And I wondered how I would find the emotional strength to be buoyant and hopeful again. I felt like a pin in a bowling alley lane that had been knocked down too many times.
I thought about people I knew who were cheerful and optimistic even when they were in dire straits. My friend Peter was diagnosed with a terminal illness and he was convinced a cure would be found in time to save him. I asked him if his parents had been optimistic too and he said his father wore rose-colored glasses and was perennially cheerful.
My friend Beth, who is in her fifties, has a husband with disabilities and a daughter who struggles with deep depression. It never occurs to Beth to bemoan her fate. She focuses on sunshine and beauty and sweets from her local bakery. When I inquired about her parents, she laughed and said everyone jokingly called her mother Pollyanna.
Then I thought back to my own upbringing. My father died at the age of 51, and it was as though the rug had been pulled out from under me. A cloud hung over me and for a long time the sun disappeared. My mother always said, “We know how that goes,” meaning that things would go south and the worst would happen. In every bad situation, a negative outcome was a foregone conclusion.
Although it seemed, at least anecdotally, that my friends’ attitudes towards future outcomes may have been learned in childhood, I decided that I would try to adopt a positive outlook in spite of what I had learned growing up.
At the first setback, I failed miserably. The second setback just proved to me that I was right to be pessimistic about healing. The third setback knocked me on my rump, metaphorically.
And one dark night I recalled what neuropsychiatrist and self-help enthusiast Abraham Low said. “Try. Fail. Try. Fail. Try. Succeed.”
So what if I learned early in life to expect the worst? So what if I failed to be hopeful after three setbacks? I decided that I have free will and if I keep trying, I will eventually succeed. The clouds are already starting to dissipate.
Try. Fail. Try. Fail. Try. Succeed.
