Rebounding

‘Life isn’t fair, Mary Frances.’ I can hear my mom’s voice telling me that when I was a child whining about something that didn’t go my way. Life not being fair is one of the harder lessons to learn in life. Our logical brains can’t handle it when 1 + 1 doesn’t equal 2. This post is about how you respond when life isn’t fair. Rebounding is as much a key to success in the workplace as it is in life. How do you respond when…

• a promotion goes to someone else
• you get demoted
• you get fired
• a client berates you for something out of your control
• you don’t get the raise you want
• you don’t get the title you want
• your spouse has an affair
• your child gets bullied
• you get in a car accident

The list can go on and on…because life isn’t fair. Good things happen when you’re ‘bad’. Bad things happen when you’re ‘good’. I curated the above list because your response to them can easily slip into victimhood. Because bouncing back is also about not being a victim. So how do you bounce back? Ask the ‘why’ question – Learn what (if anything) you can from what happened and then move on.

It is that simple, but people get stuck…either by continuing to ask why or by subtly changing the why to why me.

There may be no lesson you can learn. Or the lesson can be that your timing was off. Or medical science isn’t advanced enough yet. Or you had the wrong name (true story, I saw a client having a terrible time with one of my colleagues. Come to find out, at a previous job he had a major falling out with a guy with the same name).

Life not being fair is a reminder that I’m not in control. But..I control my response. I control the narrative. I control how long I’m stuck.

One of my favorite quotes:

“Never place a period where God has placed a comma.” 

Gracie Allen