I’m a terrible loser. My emotional reaction to loss often makes things worse. My latest mission? Learning the art of losing. Here, I’ll share my efforts to deal with a relatively insignificant loss.
Last week, a glitch in this blog platform caused my April 27th post (“Creating a Healthy Mindset”) to disappear from my site. Dagnabbit! I was angry…frustrated…and sad at another loss while dealing with illness-related losses. With my new mission in mind, I decided to use the unwanted circumstance as an opportunity to develop and practice the art of losing.
Step 1: Name the loss to properly assess its magnitude and put boundaries around it. I lost the (1) post, (2) hours I’d invested in writing it, (3) time spent trying to retrieve it. I will lose more time next week re-writing it.
Step 2: Determine whether the loss is permanent to avoid futile efforts to undo the loss. After researching options, I was 100% sure my post was in the cyberfill of APDD (accidentally permanently deleted documents).
Step 2: Name what remains to soften the blow and encourage moving on. The post had reached subscribers for three days. The ideas are still in my head. And while I wouldn’t choose to lose that post, the loss prompted my new mission, and recreating the post will reinforce the ideas in my mind—both good things.
Step 3: Grieve the loss to foster acceptance and healthy adjustment. While it was “just” a blog post, I gave myself permission to express unfiltered emotions…for two minutes, tops. That’s the most such a loss merited. (Yes, my expression contained some choice words.)
Step 4: Let go and move on. Like Elsa, I feel empowered by choosing to let “it” (my blog post) go and to look forward with hope of an even better rewrite.
In future posts, I’ll talk about how managing loss in healthy ways is essential to making life the best it can be while living with illness.
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