Loss is a part of life. We are familiar with the big losses: someone we love dies, we lose our job, a relationship ends. There are also small losses that accumulate each day: you didn’t get to sleep in because the neighbor decided to mow the lawn, a friend cancels dinner plans, your favorite coffee shop is closed because their power is out.

How we navigate these losses will depend on whether we metabolize the grief or disappointment we feel or if we become demoralized and unable to function. 

This is where resilience comes in. Resilience is the ability to pick yourself up and keep expanding. We all know people who face tremendous adversity and have a miraculous ability to keep going, but resilience isn’t magic. It is the result of a specific ability that you can develop: the power to create hope out of despair. 

An important factor in being able to cultivate resilience is to see life’s challenges as opportunities for growth.

We are not saying that you need to be glad something terrible happened or that you should skip the grieving process when big losses occur in your life. We are saying that there is a difference between thinking of your loss as a random hardship in a universe that doesn’t care about you versus thinking of it as a challenge posed by a universe that wants you to evolve and knows that you can. 

The following tools, articles, videos, and programs will help you navigate through the pain and frustration inevitable with loss and letting go.