Losing everything doesn’t feel good. On March 2020, I lost approximately $90,000, which to me was worth a billion at the time. My heart was beating fast every single day and I felt like I was losing my mind. I’ve been there before and I know just how hard it feels to hit rock bottom.
That month was the hardest month I ever went through in my entire life. I almost mistakenly broke up with my girlfriend at the time and it was the worst feeling in the world. Especially when just the month prior, I was at the top of the world, feeling like nothing was going to stop me and there was nowhere to go but up.
Then lo and behold, my whole world turned upside down in a single day. It was sickening and every day I was sick to my stomach. I was waiting for the day my boss was going to call me to let me know that the company no longer needed my services. That would have been the extra gut punch to the stomach.
Thankfully that call never came. Instead, every month I slowly built up my net worth over the years. Diligently saving and investing over the long term even though I had no idea what would happen going forward. Then fortunately came one of the biggest bull market year we’ve ever seen in the past decade.
I know what it feels like to lose everything. How hopeless everything feels and how you just want to crawl inside a rock and never come out for the next decade. It’s demoralizing and it doesn’t just physically hurts. It emotionally and spiritually breaks you. However, not all hope is lost. You can still come out of the other side.
What Does Losing Everything Mean?
Losing everything means you lost things that cause your mental state to be at a low point. It can be in terms of money, possessions, family member, significant other, kids, relationships, and friendships. Hitting rock bottom isn’t new just to you, it happens to everyone.
Everyone has one of those feeling down stories.
For me, I felt like I lost everything when I lost money gambling, about $20,000, and when I lost $90,000 in the COVID crash of March 2020. My heart beat fast every time that I woke up and I couldn’t think straight for most of the day. All of the empire that I built up was gone in the span of a couple of weeks.
Years to build up and weeks to lose. I was demoralized beyond anything that I experienced before. I blamed myself for getting myself in that situation. A situation that I shouldn’t have been in in the first place. It was a truly awful experience. However, that’s not what defines you.
It’s what we do after we hit rock bottom that determines who we are and what we’re made of. Not when things are going well and things are rosy as can be. But how we dig out of the hole we’re in and solve problems to get out of the box we found ourselves in.
After that experience, my net worth steadily climbed back up. I received a small $7,000 bonus which lessened the sting a little bit. Then I continued to save and invest as much money as I could. I continued to be relentless in my pursuit to get back on my feet. And I miraculously and eventually reached it after 8 months.
How to Cope after Losing Everything
Losing everything doesn’t feel good. Luckily, there are strategies to cope.
1) Take a Break From Losses
This doesn’t mean take a break altogether. This means taking a break from activities that caused you to lose everything in the first place. For me, that was in trading individual stocks. I merely stopped trading individual stock trades and just continued to put in my money in index funds with the usual 401k biweekly contributions.
When you stop the activities that caused the losses, then you can get back to focusing on the areas that matter and give you value. Losing everything isn’t just about looking for the wins, it’s about cutting the losses so that you can focus on the winners. Once I steadily focused on contributing money to the S&P 500, it got better.
I started to get back to even slowly and surely. A steady paycheck sure helped but what really helped was quitting the activities that were bringing me losses. Not only did it help not distract me from the core activities that were making me money, it helped save me from myself as well.
2) Don’t Have an Emotional Outburst
I get it. You have all this pent up energy brewing inside you ready to let go at any point. It’s fine to have emotional outbursts in private but having an emotional outburst in public is the worst thing that you can ever do. That just makes the situation even worse because guess what? People have problems as well.
Other people’s problems may just be even worse than your problems. So what happens when you start making others feel bad? They start retaliating and getting back at you, in return. That makes the problem even worse. Losing everything doesn’t give you the right to make other people feel bad.
They have their own set of problems as well. Therefore, it’s more than important than ever to keep your emotions in check around others. There’s nothing wrong with letting loose out in the mountains and you start shouting to let the stress out.
There’s an obscene amount of energy built up in you right now, but it’s not the time to let it out to others.
3) Let Out the Stress in a Positive Way
The positive ways that you can let out all of the built up and pent up energy is to let it out in positive ways. Examples include going for a run, lifting weights, doing intense physical activity, and the like. Channel your energy into doing positive productive things and see what you can accomplish then.
After the strings of losses, what helped me was taking walks after work for an hour. It helped clear my head and I didn’t have to think or worry about anything work related during these walks. That was exceptionally helpful into taking a step back and physically walking away from the problem at hand.
There are productive ways to channel all of that newfound energy into positive ones. That gives you an edge against someone who hasn’t felt that strong and intense emotional set. Losing everything just may be the start of the being the best version of yourself that the world has ever seen. It’s an opportunity to rise above.
4) Continue Doing Things That Matter
You still have to go to work and you still have to put in the baseline effort you’ve been putting in before losing everything. I continued to add value to my employer and continued to work on the weekends, holidays, and the like. Keep doing these things because they’re the things that are adding value to your life.
I can’t imagine what would’ve happened if I didn’t have a steady paycheck coming in. The unemployment rate SKYROCKETED overnight due to the coronavirus pandemic. That could have easily been me and I would have truly been dead in the water. I really wouldn’t have known what to do.
Therefore, continue to focus on the things that matter to you. They’re what’s going to build the foundation for your future life. Don’t expect it to provide results right away. Take it day by day and brick by brick. Until one day, you look up and realize that you built the house that you’ve been dreaming of building.
5) Adjust Your Lifestyle
After losing everything, now’s the time to adjust your lifestyle. If you’ve been eating out often, now’s the time to cut back on eating out. Or it could be to stop buying the iced coffee every morning. Whatever the daily indulges are, it’s time to adjust your lifestyle after losing everything.
There’s nothing wrong with buying the daily lattes every now and then. However, when you don’t have the luxury and the margin in your budget in order to do so is when you need to cut back on those expenses. Now’s the time when you should cut back on those things that you’ve been meaning to cut back on.
It’s time to make some changes instead of living life like nothing happened. Something did happen and you don’t want yourself be the reason why you couldn’t dig yourself out of the hole. You are your own worst enemy. It’s time to fight the most expensive enemy you can find in the world, yourself.
6) Don’t Talk About Your Future Actions
When you talk about your goals, you are less likely to achieve them. It makes you feel like you already accomplished it even if you haven’t even come close to achieving them. Instead, just silently do the action and see where it takes you. Talkers rarely walk the walk. All they are good at is convincing others they’re going to achieve it.
They’re not good at actually achieving the goals themselves. Losing everything is the most crucial time for you keep your mouth shut. Your life depends on it. You shouldn’t take any risks doing anything that’ll make you reverse course from upwards. There’s nothing to gain by talking about your goals.
If anything, you might attract enemies who lost everything themselves but have the mentality of, “if I’m not happy, you can’t be happy”. They might even try to sabotage what you want to create and build. There’s no upside to talking about your goals but there are unlimited amounts of downside.
7) Take it Day by Day
Don’t think about what life was like before losing everything. Don’t think about how long it’ll take before you actually get to break even. Instead, just take everything day by day, action by action. See what you can do going forward and take it slow. Otherwise, you’re going to rush yourself into suboptimal decisions.
By thinking so much of the end result you lose sight of what you have to do on an immediate basis. Now’s not the time to be distracted. Now’s the time to completely put your focus back into things that are building back your future. Take it day by day.
You don’t want to fantasize about breaking even and lose opportunities that are right in front of your eyes. That was crucial for me to getting back to even. I never focused on getting back to even. I focused on trying to be better today than I was yesterday and took baby steps every day to move forward.
8) The Idea of Losing Everything is Worse than Reality
Losing everything just may be in your head and not necessarily based on reality. When I lost ~$90,000, I felt like I lost a million dollars. It was an entire year’s worth of work vanished into thin air. Just like that. However, in hindsight, that wasn’t even close to losing a million dollars.
The idea of losing $90,000 hit harder than me mentally than what the reality of the situation warranted it. No matter what you lost, the thought of losing hits harder than actually losing it. Our mind plays tricks on us because by making it feel worse than it actually is, it makes us more incentivized to avoid it.
It may seem like rock bottom. However, it may very well just not be as bad as you think it is. Our minds plays all sorts of games to us to keep us from moving forward with an action. It’s not the end of the world. We just think and feel that it is. Decisions and situations are reversible and controllable. It’s just up to us.
9) Never Give Up
When you are losing everything, it’s easy to throw in the towel. It’s easy to want to give up because well, you’re just downright exhausted. However, now’s not the time to give up. Now’s the time to shine and show the world what you can do. You can throw the kitchen sink at the problem and go down swinging.
You’re not just going to let the world walk and run all over you. You’re going to rise above and come out swinging. When your back’s up against the wall is not the time to give in and let others have the win. Now’s the time to fight, claw, kick, bite, and punch your way out of the depths of the problem.
You’re tougher than the problem itself. You look at the problem straight in the eye and kick it right on the mouth. Then make that problem stand down until it can’t get up any more. When I lost everything, not once did I ever think of giving up. Taking a break? Absolutely. Giving up? Absolutely not.
You Can Rise Above Losing Everything
The strongest people are not the ones who have the innate ability to just stay mentally and physically tough. They’re the ones who got back up after losing everything. Again. And again. And again. Until they actually rose out of the problem. Then that toughness stays with them even afterwards, which propelled them ahead even further.
The human mind and body was built tougher than that. You are no exception. You can rise above and be at an even better spot than you are currently. There are days when you want to just crawl inside a rock and stay there. Those are the days when I would Google what to do afterwards and wouldn’t find anyone talking openly about their losses.
That’s where I come in. I highlight my wins as well as my losses so that life isn’t this rosy picture of sunshines, unicorns, and rainbows. I only wish other people were open talking about their losses because it’s a part of life. However, humans are funny. Their emotions stop them from talking about their losses.
No one wants to seem like a loser so they hide them under the rug and hope that things work out by the end. Things do have a way of working out by the end but imagine how much more we could’ve solved the problems if we talked openly about the struggles. It’s OK to feel down and lose everything.
Many people have lost everything before, are losing everything today, and will lose everything in the future. It’s just a part of life. You can’t have wins without losses. Therefore, understand it from me. You’re not alone in this. I thought my losses would devastate me but two year’s worth of time made all the difference in the world.
How to Cope with Losing Everything Shortlist:
- Take a break from losses
- Don’t have an emotional outburst
- Let out the stress in a positive way
- Continue doing things that matter
- Adjust your lifestyle
- Don’t talk about your future actions
- Take it day by day
- The idea is worse than reality
- Never give up
Am loving the bullet-points on your shortlist. My favorite is #2, ‘don’t have an emotional outburst.’ Pro tip: If you walk into a gun store, they won’t sell you a gun if you are crying.
#8 is pretty valuable, too, ‘the idea is worse than the reality.’ There is a ‘sense of shame’ that comes with loss, and while one can walk around all-day, every-day, obsessing on that loss, most other people don’t automatically look at your and think ‘wow, what a huge loss!’ One thing I would do-over, if faced with this today, is only tell one person one time. It may feel like you are ‘being honest’ and ‘humble’ by sharing your failure, instead others see it as a burden to have to listen to others’ problems, especially if they can’t take action to help. Surprisingly, some people you might share with may secretly (or not) take pleasure from your suffering. They may ‘spread it around’, experiencing schadenfreude. Would you like others, prospective friends, colleagues, neighbors, family, to know about ‘gambling’ and the consequences? One thing that is quite impressive about your story, David, is that you had to have $90,000 to lose in the first place; not too common, especially in your age cohort. In a way, that loss is a badge of honor. Enjoyed your post, as always!
Thank you JayCeezy! It seems to be much more relatable these days where the bear market shows no signs of stopping and we haven’t even hit the definition of a recession yet!
I’m taking it day by day and making sure that I can still secure my future in the meantime. The mindset makes a huge bit of difference.
Try losing everything from $1 million and get back to me. This life has handed me repeated rotten eggs now for years upon years. It has been truly harrowing. Alongside health complications I am finished now. It’s all over. I hate this world. Life isn’t worth it in my eyes. God has left me damned and I truly resent him. At this point I have renounced my faith and will never return to it. God is an evil cruel wretch and I intend to seek justice for the years of wrongdoing that have happened to me. He is an unloving coward and I hope he loses all of his followers. Curse this ugly planet.
Life is definitely not easy and it’s not easy to let go of all the anger that’s happened to you throughout the years.
All I can say is, there are many people who’ve lost $1mil+ and got back on their feet. Some lost $1mil+ and never got back on their feet but we should strive to be the ones who got back on their feet instead of the ones who haven’t.
I empathize with your pain. I can’t imagine what the people in ’07-’09 felt when all of their house equity got wiped out and they were forced to watch as their friends move up the ladder while they have to deal with bankruptcies.
So sorry to hear you lost money for 8 months. That must have been very hard for you.
I lost everything
My family is dead except my brother
My brother stole from my Dad’s will and tried to cut me out so I spent money on lawyers b/c he had no right to do that. He still stole $60,000. Free & clear.
My dear friend died. He was like an uncle and I still miss him.
I lost my job even though I had the highest sales in my company through my cold sourced leads.
A “friend” kept borrowing my key to take extra breaks so I got fired for taking excessive breaks. They tried to deny us so I hired an attorney. They didn’t show up b/c the film they had was her, not me. She is now 6 years at that job.
I couldn’t get work b/c of a bad referral from them.
I finally was hired for a $15./ hr job from account executive at $60-80,000./yr to a moldy office that cheated me out of 2:/3 of my commissions.
Three months in COVID shut that job down.
Unemployment insurance red tape lasted for 5 mo this so I put everything in storage and lived in my car.
Humiliating. Trying to use a clean safe bathroom was nearly impossible with COVID shutting everything down even my gym.
My car (house) was a totaled car that happened 14 Feb one year after a very painful breakup . Turns out the guy not only caused me to have internal surgery 2 days after HUMILIATING ER visit when he asked if he could drop me off at 3 AM without my phone or ride home. I nearly passed out from loss of blood & he forced me to have sex with him again that night, then left.
I had just found out my best guy friend had Lewy’s disease & Parkinson’s. I was heartbroken and unable to make smart decisions (obviously).
I was forced out of my home of 20 years. My sigh or and best friend said she “needed to step away from our friendship”
While packing my garage I found out my very valuable heirloom furniture and family photos were covered in mold from a water leak I’d been trying to get fixed for 2 years. I couldn’t move it until I cleaned and dried it so ended up with a conviction of not paying rent (still 1st thing seen when my name is googled) even though the house was declared uninhabitable after I called the county about the damage from the leak.
I was struggling b/c of internal stitches and having to move by myself. Guy I had dated said he would help. Very strong, not working & has a truck.
Well he ran off a young guy that I hired then 3 days before I had to be out told me he’s not helping me.
Needless to say I was unable to rent a place for 3 years. Homeless for 2 then after surgery went to a home to recover. It turned out to be a halfway house where I was threaded to be murdered for preparing a can of tuna and a potatoe by two housemates. They lied and said I could only eat baloney and stale white bread and spoiled milk.
Oh and the scitzophrenic medical hospital or prison girl who pulled a knife on me from the voices in her head when I went in the kitchen. And thr scitzophrenic Russian girl that was removed by police after I showed pictures of her stalking me. They didn’t do anything until I showed pics. She was put in my room so had to talk her down every night so she would not attack me in my sleep since all Americans were evil. Found out later her father and brother were myrdered in front of her in Russia. Can’t believe I lived through that.
When your life is treated a certain clarity set in and I was able to somehow bypass being assaulted or murdered.
I had fought 5 months for shoulder surgery having to bump start my car (still homeless at that point) every time with my bad shoulder and was there in a sling unable to use my right arm against hardened previously imprisoned violent mental health patients refusing to take their meds.
It was like a psyche ward in a prison.
The front door had to remain unlocked 24/7 and we were not permitted to put locks on our bedroom doors. I snuck in a security bar.
Oh back to rock bottom.
I had to leave my home state and move to the desert.
No more gym(my happy place) no more outdoors, walks, nature or neighbors I knew for 20 years or fresh air (110 for 21 days straight and no ac in my car so I am basically grounded.
I bump start my car and stock up at Costco every 4-6 weeks. That’s it.
Four months in and 2-3 more to go.
Well my best guy friend died. Getting closer to rock bottom.
So I was extremely fortunate to take up a friend who said I could stay with her free to get back on my feet.
Shortly after her daughter who I adore but is now a mean thug behaving, fentanyl addicted, thief, extremely mean, spoiled and abusive like I’d never seen to my friend moves back in.
With her drug addicted 28 yo criminal bf. She’s 17. On threat of being told to move I cannot report him.
Now begins the descent into living in a room next to a drug den starting at 3AM every night, fighting at 6-8 AM.
Exactly when my new job starts. I wake up to the smell of fentanyl smoke flowing into my room. I ask my brother for help b/c his wife works in property mngr in Monterey where we grew up.
My credit went from 750 to 540. Kinda difficult to get a place even though I stayed in my last place for 20 years without any late payments…She has a studio for $1200. But I’m still on track to rock bottom…so the fact that she won’t pull some strings to help me -not to stereotype but she grew up in Mexico City so is from a place of corruption & my brother, who abandoned my mother while stealing $5 here, to help her move but takes a Hawaiian vacation instead lying that he can’t take off work…he owns his own business..$2k there $8-10k twice for DUI’s, help with down payment and mortgage for yearson & on since she lost the love of her life and my beloved stepdad suddenly a year earlier.
Well she has dementia so she can’t come to his house and only got to see her grandkids for 1 hour after visiting 1 week and unable to drive without getting lost.
Well he laughed when he told me this. My heart was broken. I wanted her to move close to me so I could help her. He wouldn’t and thought that was so great.For the next 5 years until she died he was telling her I was the reason she couldn’t visit.all the abuse I took for that
I couldn’t hurt her by telling her that her “wonderful son” was the cause.
I finally told her before she died. I didn’t want her to die believing that.
Between a rock and a hard place. But not rock bottom yet.
When she died he called me and said not to worry about the funeral expenses because he had taken care of everything, he paid for it all.
Lie
She and my stepdad paid for everything but the casket. Which I paid for on credit. I ordered beautiful flowers and asked him to pay half of the $350.
He said he didn’t buy them but instead brought “special” flowers from his mil’d garden. He sat in the back row at her service. He didn’t speak about her and barely spoke to me “had to go to work” his window cleaning g client couldn’t wait a day for his mothers funeral. Now where we grew up ppl are not like that. Just another lie.
He kept his young son up by his face b/c he knows I speak the truth. Imagine he was terry his wife would find out his lie$.
He knows I know all his skeletons. Many skeletons. I’ve kept every secret and just figured out why he separates me from his ppl.
He did not show up for the burial.
Prob ashamed it was not at a ritzy graveyard. They preferred to help out instead of spending on themselves.
Now his true earnings will be all he has.
Back to rock bottom. Almost there, I’ll just add the events that got me there.
After building my home with everything I would need to the tune of $90,000. Over 20 years all I needed to do is keep saving for a home.
My storage was auctioned without my knowledge after paying $13,000. to “keep it safe” no they did not use my debit card with $8k in it.
I received the paperwork of my mom and stepdads death and illnesses.
All my photos, fine art >$40-50k, my personal art over my lifetime that I created and won awards for, my valuable book collection (now selling for a few thousand dollars that I can’t afford to buy back) these were
personal. I wouldn’t sell them. They had tremendous personal value) my sterling silver flatware service of 5, my jewelry tag Heyerdahl watch, diamond, ruby, pearl and many one of a kind antique pieces plus sterling and gold chains anklets, finger and toe rings& my mothers platinum 20 diamond cocktail ring and many other 14k and precious stone heirloom jewelry, heirloom clothing of my mothers, a mid century modern bedroom set, heirloom mahogany dining set with china cabinet, a Ethan Allen sleigh bed my mother bought when I graduated college, overstuffed down filled chairs and ottoman, a beautiful dining table I made by hand, pottery barn dining chairs, an extensive collection of high end outdoor furniture, decor, umbrellas with 2 very expensive stands, a set of two wooden Adirondack rocking chairs and table ( I bought so my mom could sit outside looking at the ocean in the sun as she was staying with me with hospice help.
My brother came down with the grandkids, for one hour, they left then my brother sat in a corner behind my Moms view and said nothing until they picked him after after “!!!Tarbet Greatland!!!” on their way to Legoland and Disneyland. At least she got a very cold pit stop.
Almost there.
Sorry to go into detail but this is a very deeply painful situation that still is excruciating in my heart.
I loved my brother so much and looked up to him. Seeing this truth made me realize he had been doing underhanded things my whole life. So much of my childhood trauma was directly caused by him. He easily had me believing it was others.
But not rock bottom.
Fast forward to AZ many years later.
I wake up one Monday in a panic. I dreamed my storage was sold.
I looked at my bank statements. There were no payments for 3mo this from the card they had connected to my account w$8k in it.
I called and kept getting put on hold while trying to talk the empty fealing of
Dread out of my head. I was getting nauseous. No one would tell me anything. Finally the incredibly insecure and rude boss put me on speaker phone.
She told me very flippantly that everything was gone. Yep she said sold it all yesterday. They were laughing at me on speaker phone as I begged her to let me buy it back. I had $8k. She kept asking why I was calling the day after it was sold. I told her I woke up in a panic. My whole life was in there since I was living in my car. I begged her for help. I asked them in shock if they were laughing at me.
It was too late and I didn’t have any options.
Not rock bottom.
Well my great job that I was a top producer with the most hospital accounts by far decided after a salesperson lost one of the biggest sponsors that they were eliminating our entire department.
Looks like my dreams are becoming out of reach. I am 62 and found out after I couldn’t shake COVID that I have lesions on my pancreas, liver, masses on my gallbladder and a massive kidney stone.
That explains a lot.
Oh by the way I have an apartment at $2k/mo so fixing my car (pipe dream)and paying rent are expenses I cannot continue with.
My grief has hit full force and I’ve been diagnosed with severe and complicated depression, complicated PTSD, anxiety and complicated grief.
I’m here at I hope rock bottom.
One can dream.
I haven’t had a day in over a year that I can’t stop crying.
I told my brother about my health and he abandoned me. In his special way of upsetting me to tears the last three times I spoke with. My pancreas tumor grew from 1.6mm to 2.3cm in 8 months.
I am afraid to alienate anyone that is kind to me by talking about anything in my life.
I’m in pain everyday both physical and mental.
I had a dislocated thumb for two years and is so bad now it hurts all the time and gives shooting pain randomly when I use my left pain(!) I meant left hand.
I’ve lost three teeth ironically after the dentist damaged them then denied it. Now they r hounding me to come back since I need two dental implants and a bridge.
Found a good dentist but can’t pay for the work I need. It’s had to chew food.
The infections caused so much pain
I hope this is rock bottom. Oh the guy that sent me to the hospital tried to run his same tired game.
Wrote a song for me, called, declared hi love and desire to marry me🤣
Wow I see him crystal clearly but he doesn’t know it.
When I told him I was living in my car, well you can guess how that went over.
I did get the opportunity to tell him that I didn’t want to marry him after how he treated me. Told him how he repulsed me after how he treated me.
I need to introduce him to my brother.
Anyway please pray for me that things will turn around as soon as possible in case this isn’t rock bottom
It’s very difficult to get these things taken care of and look for work in my debilitating mental state and current physical state and without transportation.
Work would be a huge blessing. I keep at it.
Please forgive typos and any errors.
I need glasses 😵💫lol
I’m sorry all of that happened to you, Kate. I read your story. It truly does sound heartbreaking and I can only imagine what you’re going through right now and what you’ve been through already. I will definitely be praying for you.
I wish I could make it better. I really do hope things turn out for the better 🙏
thank you for publishing this. It truly gives me hope.
Absolutely.