2 Ways To Maintain Your Sanity, Even If You've Lost Everything Else In Life

Losing sucks. Whether it's a loss of material goods, a job, dream or a loved one, they all hurt to some degree. What differentiates them, though, is the attachment we choose to assign them. It's how much we choose to be attached to something and let it affect us.

Life goes on, as long as we're still breathing. Somehow, down the line, you'll look back and see that you made it through. So, it's okay to lose, as long as you don't lose these following two things:

Self Belief

The belief in yourself is all you have left when everything gets lost. We live our daily lives held to certain standards and expectations. When those aren't met, we don't feel sufficient. When this happens, more often than not, our confidence dwindles and we settle into our shells to operate only in our comfort zone.

I see it all of the time. People choose not to try; they don't challenge themselves and they don't venture into new things. The problem is that they don't believe. They don't believe that they can do anything interesting; that they can accomplish a new goal and live life on a better wavelength.

When you lose all the material things in the world, you start to feel like it is your fate, and you're defined by these experiences. In reality, our strengths define us. How we choose to respond to adversity is what illustrates us.

At some point, we start to look for encouragement from others. We expect others to lift us up and make us happy. Again, this is only creating expectations to eventually let yourself down.

Most of the time, people don't even know what's going on within us, so it's silly to expect them to cater to our needs.

Then, we start to take it out on the ones who are closest to us because we think it's okay (it's never okay). When you start to feel like you need a boost of confidence and encouragement from outside sources, you'll likely fall into sadness.

What we need to remember is that failure is not final, and we cannot let ourselves be defined by circumstances. We must believe in ourselves. An unwavering faith in good things to happen and a belief in yourself to continue on is all people need to fight on. As Steve Jobs put it,

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

Character

Things are replaceable and turn to dust, but people's legacies live on. The world will talk about what you did and how you impacted the universe, but most importantly, people will talk about the person you decided to be and how you lived your life.

They say character is who you are when nobody is around, but I'd like to think it's who you are all of the time. Whom we choose to be is tested constantly, whether in private or public. So, really, character is how you live your life on and off the stage.

The reason why we never lose our sense of character is because when character is lost, we really have nothing. What will people say about you when you're gone?

I've never heard anyone say, "Oh, he drove a Ferrari before he died," or "She lived in an enormous beach house for her entire life," when speaking about the kind of life one lived.

The kind of things you will hear will go something like this: "He never let me down," or "He worked his ass off for that Ferrari," or "She risked everything for that business so she could eventually get that house." So, we should never compromise our character, regardless of how much we're tempted.

Character is essentially who you are and how you choose to treat people. It's what people will remember after you're gone.

The ups and downs of life are tough. We wake up one day happy as ever and the next day, we've lost all hope in our goals. What's left is how much faith we choose to have in ourselves. Once that's gone, there's pretty much no effort to move forward with anything.

Remember, we cannot lose faith in ourselves. It's all that's left when we lose everything. Ultimately, people will reflect more on who you were as a person, rather than what you had.

Your legacy is defined by your actions and how you execute those actions. When your dignity, trust and character are tested, what kind of legacy will you want to leave? When you feel like all is lost, you must continue to believe in yourself and remain faithful that things will end up okay.

Photo Courtesy: We Heart It