Financial loss can be heartbreaking. Here are some tips on how to recover from it.

1. Acceptance
Accept the fact that this loss has really happened to you. If you find yourself thinking, “Once the stock market comes back, everything will be fine” or “Even though this new job pays half of what I made at my old job, we can still live the same way we did before,” you are in denial. It’s time to intentionally assess your situation and accept its reality. Honor your own grief about what you have lost. This really is a loss – be careful not to minimize it.

Don’t resist. This does not mean to give up. But it does mean to acknowledge both your emotions about your financial loss rather than fight against them. Going with the river current is much easier than fighting to swim against the current.

2. Build and use your support system
Find people you trust: friends, family, spiritual leaders. Gather your support team around you just as you would if you had lost a loved one.

Talk. You don’t have to talk about the specifics of the loss, just your feelings about it. This is an important way for you to process your grief and not get stuck in it.

Take your power back. By talking about your feelings related to the financial loss, you take the power away from the “deep, dark secret” and shine the light of day on it.

3. Get a different perspective
Remember that you have made it through past challenges. When you’re faced with a loss, it can seem like the worst thing that has ever happened to you. And it might be. But remember that you have experienced many difficulties in your life and you have made your way through them.

Stay in the moment. Rather than ruminating about past events or fretting about the future, try to stay with what is happening right now. Life is happening in front of your eyes, not in the past or some time up ahead.

4. See what you can learn.
There’s a lesson in everything. Maybe you did make some poor financial decisions. Learn from your mistakes. Maybe your value system was overly focused on material things. Learn the joys of simpler living.

Maybe your kids didn’t really understand what it meant to pull together as a family until now. Help them learn this lesson during these tough times.

5. Find the gifts.
The sand that irritates the oyster eventually makes a pearl. The economic loss you are experiencing now may be the very thing you need to learn to thrive into new opportunities opening before you.

One woman I spoke to who had lost her job was doing surprisingly well emotionally. When I asked her how she maintained her good attitude, she said, “I decided to expand rather than contract.” She took action to learn new skills, enjoy new experiences, and take a different path in life. Perhaps you are being given an opportunity to expand your life as well.

There are gifts to be found everywhere, even in the darkest of times. Getting your bounce back after financial loss may not mean getting your money or assets replaced, but it does mean learning to survive – and thrive – in the most difficult times.

Will you take this as an opportunity or a defeat?

From: The Positive Story - http://www.thepositivestory.info/2016/12/how-to-recover-from-financial-loss.html