In his book Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success, Rick Newman highlights nine attributes he sees as common in resilient people. These skills are adaptive behaviors that can be cultivated and can help you come back from set backs, disappointments and loss-sometimes even stronger.
The first of these nine skills is:
They accept failure.
It's not that you have to like failure or minimize its impact, but learning to "fail productively" and managing to view it as a learning opportunity is helpful and healthy.
Sometimes, when a loved one dies for whom we cared, we feel as though we failed because they died. We might reframe the concept of failing into the belief that we helped them live a comfortable and a quality-filled life until they died. Death is part of life and not accepting this final outcome is futile and a guaranteed road to feeling miserable.
With any loss or death it is useful to mine through it for the lessons we can apply to future situations and experiences. Perhaps a friend dies because they did not have colon cancer screenings. We can choose to get the recommended screening. Or an acquaintance dies in an motor vehicle accident because she was drinking and driving. We can chose otherwise for ourselves. This kind of learning is not easy or meant to be portrayed as trivial, but a further tragedy would be allowing their deaths to be meaningless.
