Over the past couple of years, I’ve faced a handful of major personal disasters.  And, in response, I’ve floundered through a wide array of coping mechanisms.  Some worked well; others, not so much.  In the hope that I can save you some pain, here’s what I learned through that experience, the things that were actually helpful in carrying me through difficult (and sometimes exceedingly difficult) stretches of life.

But, first, let me start with what doesn’t work: numbness, rage, and despair.  That said, at least in my own case, when shit hits the fan, they’re my inevitable first response.  For some initial period of time – hours or even days – I’m completely numb. Then I alternate like clockwork between feeling wildly angry and wallowing in misery.  Neuroscience research suggest it takes at least an hour for your brain to recover from even minor slights and setbacks.  And, at the other end of the spectrum, Judaism  “shiva” – the period of intense mourning after the death of an immediate family member – at seven days.  So, based on the severity of your disaster, find somewhere in that range: no less than an hour, no more than a week.  During that time, cycle through raging / despairing / feeling numb (or whatever else you personally default to) without chastising yourself.  Just let it rip.  Then stop, because it isn’t actually helping, and do this instead:

1. Envision the Future.

Viktor Frankl, who survived the Holocaust as a prisoner in several concentration camps, losing his entire family along the way (so, in short, he had it worse than whatever you’re dealing with) said, “with the right why, a man can survive any how.”  In his case, the ‘why’ was the drive to write a book about his experience, to share the psychological insights he’d gained with world.  (And if you haven’t read the resultant Man’s Search for Meaning, go do that now.)  But the specific why doesn’t matter, so long as it’s extremely compelling to you, and at least a year or two (and possibly ten or twenty) in the future.  I recommend strongly that you commit your why to paper, whether it’s a (to use Jim Collins’ famous phrase) Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal that you’re excited to pursue, or just a detailed description of a better future – where you’ll be, with whom, what you’ll be doing, what you’ll have done.  Whatever it is, write it down, and then re-read it frequently.  At least daily at first, if not more.  Tell yourself that’s what you’re gunning for, that’s what on the far side of this current, seemingly unsurvivable mess.  Use that ‘why’ as your north star, and let it carry you through.

2. Then Focus on Today

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “there’s no burden so heavy it can’t be carried until nightfall.”  So, as Sir William Osler advised, “live your life in day-tight compartments.”  Thinking about that distant-future ‘why’ will buoy you up.  But thinking about any future short of that – how you’re going to make it through tomorrow, or the next two weeks, or the next year and a half – will drive you into the ground. You project your current misery forward, multiply its weight by all those future days, and are sure there’s no way that you can possibly deal with all the unhappiness you see stretched out ahead.  But as the Zen Buddhists say, thinking you can’t survive another second of a pain you’re feeling is a lie; you survived this second, so you can survive the next, too.  So make that your focus: surviving one more day.  Make it into bed, this evening, in one piece, and call that victory. Worry about today today, and deal with tomorrow once it arrives.

3. Get Moving

First, literally.  Especially right after something terrible happens, I’ve found that walking is the very best thing I can do.  My mind may be reeling, but just taking step after step after step seems to slowly dissipate some of the overwhelm.  Similarly, going to the gym, and working out hard does more for my mood than almost anything else.  But after that, get your brain moving.  When things go wrong, I usually feel like I’m facing an endless number of problems, all piled up on top of one another.  But, in fact, while your problems may be terrible, they’re also finite.  So when everything is crap, I start by making a ‘cloud list’ – an inventory of everything that’s a problem in my life at that moment.  In my own experience, and for the people who I’ve helped do this during their own crises, just making a concrete list, seeing it down on paper, helps a surprising amount by itself.  Then, for each problem, figure out a first thing or two that you can do in response.  Some problems can’t be ‘fixed,’ but for all of them there’s still some concrete, positive action you can take.  You have terminal cancer with three months to live?  Fine; draft a plan for how you’re going to make the most of those three months.  Similarly, for some problems, the action might be a long-shot Hail Mary, unlikely to even work.  Which is also fine.  You’ll still feel hugely better knowing you’re at least going down swinging.  But, in short, find something you can do, and start doing it.  In my experience, forward motion helps more than anything else.

4. See the Moon

One of my favorite poems is a Haiku by Basho:

Barn’s burned down.
Now,
I can see the moon.

Or as an old cowboy couplet has it

Two men looked out from prison bars;
one saw the mud, the other saw stars.

Sometimes, life sucks.  And I wouldn’t suggest pretending otherwise, becoming a mindless Polyanna.  But eventually, after you let yourself rage and despair, after you find your future ‘why,’ focus on today, and get moving, the only other thing you can do is to start looking for what good there still is in the world.  Sitting surrounded by the ashes and embers of your burned-down barn of a life, at some point, you have to look for the moon.  To be honest, I’m still puzzling out the best way to do that, the best way to snap myself back to seeing the glass as half-full.  Often, just reading that Basho haiku does it for me.  And when that doesn’t work, I’ve also had success with giving myself a daily journaling assignment: for a week (or even a month), starting with the prompt, “[Disaster x] is the best thing that ever happened to me, because…” and forcing myself to complete the page.  But, at the end of the day, it comes down to making a choice: deciding that you’d rather focus on whatever is positive in your life, rather than the negative that’s been weighing you down.

That’s the four-step plan that works for me.  So now, when things go wrong, I may still be launched into a first stretch of numbness and rage and despair.  But even then, I know there’s a reliable path out the other side.