There are so many stories in our world today about life after death, success after failure, and hope after despair, but you may be thinking that your loss cannot have a ‘happily ever after’ while you’re going through it. In fact, it seems like our world has us thinking that we’ve lost something, that we’re the only ones missing something, or we’re made to feel that no one has suffered as badly. You may be thinking that what has happened to you is so bad, so ugly, and so unfair that nothing good can possibly come from your loss. I am here to tell you that you are wrong. If you can muster up enough strength to read through this book, with just a glimmer of willingness to read the words on the pages that follow, I believe that you will find the ability to want to begin again differently.
One story that has half of a happy ending involves my friend, Irma. She and her husband ran the biggest daycare in a border town for almost fifteen years. They had several other profitable businesses, as well. Their weekly revenue was between $50,000 and $60,000. They had what looked like a successful business. However, in the matter of several weeks, after a painful IRS audit found that they had not paid some taxes, the business began a downward spiral. It did not help that at the same time the IRS completed their audit and decided what the company owed the government, the economy dried up the jobs in their area so that people who brought children to the daycare stopped coming because they no longer had jobs to pay for it.
The other businesses suffered as well, and within a year, Irma and her husband lost everything. Then, the stress of it all caused Irma’s husband to suffer a stress-related heart attack and die. Irma had lost her second husband. As a single mother, she moved to a big city and re-married a wonderful man who died from old age but did not leave her any of his money due to leaving everything to his son from his first marriage.
To be honest, for a while, Irma lost it. She suffered a mild breakdown and was hospitalized for a while. She retired from her job to have funds from her pension to live on. Her youngest daughter, with a young child of her own, began to help her regain her hope again by providing her with her basic needs so that she could begin to function again. At that time, Irma decided not to give up, but to begin again. She went back to work and began saving her retirement pension and living off of her wages. She got her “hope” back and decided not to succumb to the hurt and pain she felt due to her losses.
Today, after ten years, Irma has over a quarter of a million dollars in her bank account. She eventually paid off all of the IRS obligations she incurred from the bankruptcy event that killed her husband, and she is now paying for her grandchildren’s college education and is preparing her legacy to live on long after she’s gone. Now in her early seventies, Irma is still active, vibrant, and working because she wants to. I share Irma’s story because she decided to begin again, even though it was hard after the death of her third husband, suffering a minor breakdown, and having to depend on her youngest daughter for assistance.
Irma is no better than anyone else who has lost and restarted, but she did do something those who give up don’t typically do; she decided she would start over or begin again. In Irma’s case, she suffered several losses: the loss of her business, which led to the loss of her second husband, which led to her moving to a bigger city and marrying again, and then losing her husband, the house, and her sanity for a while. But now, she believes that it is never too late to begin again, which is exactly what she has been doing for ten years. Is she perfect now? No. But she definitely loves life again with her focus on the seven processes detailed in this book.
It is sometimes easier at the time of your loss—or, in Irma’s case, losses—to want to give up. Sometimes you feel like the forces that are coming against you, causing you to lose are making you give up. However, you still have choices you can make. Even if you don’t think you have choices, you do. Even if you have no more money, you still have choices you can make. Even if you lost everything through bankruptcy, you still have choices you can make. Even if you lost your home, or worse, even if you lost your family or your loved ones because of the loss of your funding or your business, you still have choices you can make.
Sometimes it will definitely feel like you do not have choices. But this is not true. You always have choices that you can make. All of your options may seem bleak; however, to have a choice of which bleak option to follow means you still have a choice to make.
I believe that, no matter what, if you can find it somewhere within you to decide not to give in or to give up, you will win. Win your joy back, your happiness back, maybe even your job or business back, but definitely your life back to where you can be better in control of your future and your destiny because you decided not to give up and you made a choice to begin again.
I am not saying that anything in this book is easy to do. I am saying that you will definitely decide that what is in this book is worth it to do as you begin to realize that you can begin again. Anyone can begin again, even you—especially you, because you were brave enough to pick up this book and begin reading it.
What will happen to you if you do not finish this book or if you decide that you do not want to begin again? One thing that will definitely happen to you if you decide to succumb to the lost contract, the lost employees, the lost business, or any loss is that you will never know what could have been different for you if you had just tried a do-over. Will you die? Probably not, but something in you may die. Your hope that you had when you started your nonprofit business, or when you got the big contract, or when you hired your team—that may die within you.
What about regrets? I personally try hard not to have regrets, and I do this by being deliberate about the decisions I make that I have to live with. If you make a decision, whether you finish my book or not, not to begin again, what regrets will you have?
By now, everyone—and by everyone, I mean probably billions of people—have heard about the big comeback Tiger Woods had at the recent Master’s Golf Tournament, which he won after not winning big for almost eight years. When I read the headlines about Tiger, I thought about all of the failures and losses he had gone through. In most cases, all of Tiger’s losses had been by his own doing. He lost his family due to his infidelity. This major loss appeared to hurt his golf game as he stopped winning tournaments. He lost many endorsements from several big companies, and he lost his health.
It was interesting for me to read about his back problems. It appears that the year before he won the 2019 Master’s, he had a third back surgery that he thought, along with many sports authorities, would end his career. There are some video clips of famous sports writers and anchors proclaiming that Tiger Woods’ best days were gone and that he would never win again. These clips were shown over and over again after Tiger won the 2019 Masters as proof of what?
I believe Tiger’s come back was due to him deciding not to give up, but to begin again. While he was already a wealthy man, and he was never in danger of losing his wealth, he lost a lot of credibility and his entire career upon which he had built his life. He was declared a has-been. In the life of someone famous, to be declared a has-been is probably one of the worst monikers that one can be tagged with, as it means one’s career is over. A lot of the time, people forget how great one was when he or she was legitimately great because he or she is now a has-been. With one win, Tiger changed the course of his legacy, and his career is now back on. Now, Tiger is projected to break more records by winning more tournaments, and he is back in the winner’s circle.
Now, I am not suggesting that I am like Tiger. But I do believe Tiger is like all of us who have experienced loss. He had choices to make about giving up or continuing to pursue his dreams. We have the same choices Tiger had.
When I lost my biggest contract ever, about twenty other entities in my industry lost their contracts, too. Yet I am the only entity still standing after the loss. Did they not try to begin again? What did I do differently that they did not do to restart our company so that we were once again striving? Why didn’t my nonprofit close or go away like them? While I do not know everything about their businesses or what caused them to close when they lost their contracts, I do know that our company did something different by being willing to begin again differently. One of the reasons I do not know the specifics regarding why