9 Ways to Cope After Losing Everything

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