{photo by Kim Bajorek, model Lily Brockman}

I know you can relate. When life is going swimmingly well and then the proverbial rug is pulled out from underneath you. You stand there in shock, hardly able to breathe, shaking with anger and wondered, “What will I do?”

My month, in fact the entirety of 2014, has been a year of extreme ups and downs. I’m not one for drama or living life on the edge so having such extremes has rattled my nerves. It has also forced me to ask a lot of questions about how I manage certain aspects of my life and has challenged the very core of who I am.

I will save you the details, because this isn’t a therapy or gossip session and frankly they are not important. What’s most important, as I have come to realize, is what one does after the floor disappears from under your feet.

The word resilience comes to mind, but how does one obtain it? What does resilience actually look like? What steps do you take to become instantly resilient. I knew I needed to find out – and fast.

We will all experience times of unexpected disappointments, failures and changes of plans.

Here are 5 ways to overcome these challenging time and build up your resilience muscle.

Lean on your friends.

Reach out to friends immediately. Not just one friend but several friends. As soon as things for me began to unravel I began texting and calling friends immediately. Not only is their emotional support exactly what you need in difficult times but great friends will provide suggestions, rally behind you and begin to help you find a solution. They’ll also take you out for a couple of glasses of wine and some karaoke.

Wallow for 15 minute then figure out Plan B.

I fumed over what happened for a few days. I actually now know what it feels like to be blinded by anger. (Ok. I’ll share a little to provide context. I was selling a business and the buyer pulled out long after a verbal agreement sticking me with a stale business and a huge loss of money.) Take the time to express your feelings but quickly move into “Plan B”mode. Use anger simply as lighter fluid to get you into action, but allow it to burn off and move onward.

Focus on what’s going well.

With all the crazy-making that I was experiencing, I had neglected just how great every other area of my life was going. It’s so easy to focus on what’s going wrong, because it’s so dramatic and heavy feeling. It’s terribly distracting. But what’s going well in your life is much more important. It will also buoy you in tough times. For me the same day the business deal went sideways, we found a great home in the new city we had just moved to. Being in a state of gratitude for everything that is going right and that I do has focused my energy in a better direction.

Don’t spew anger and revenge. Forgive.

A wise friend of mine quickly texted me a link to an interview Oprah conducted with Marianne Williamson. It completely moved me from being in a place of constriction to a place of forgiveness and openness. This video brought me to tears and allowed me to move forward so swiftly it was truly a miracle.

Trust there is a better path.

It is so easy to get caught up in your own planning and ideas of how things should go. I found that I had to trust that everything was going to open up and resolve in a way that made better sense than the plan I proposed. Holding on too tight to your plans does not work. Trust that as soon as you let go the limbs, brush and debris will disappear and the path – an even better one than you imagined – will avail itself.

Life is going to toss you a few disappointments from time to time, but it’s not the disappointments that matter; it’s how we grow and learn from them.

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September 2014 Issue