Something bad is going to happen to you. It’s a matter of time. Quite possibly, over the course of a lifetime, many bad somethings will happen to you. As I see it, you are faced with a few choices. First and foremost, you need to give yourself time to heal and grieve whatever loss has occurred. This is true even if it doesn’t seem like your “bad thing” is a loss in the traditional sense of the word. In the process of healing or grieving we will be faced with a choice. That choice will make all the difference in how we move forward.

We might choose to feel as if we somehow have been singled out. People choosing this path tend to believe that most people do not encounter similar challenges. It’s something like the notion of the dysfunctional family. It is certainly true that families aren’t supposed to have alcoholic parents, domestic violence, abuse, neglect, mental illness, poverty, or hunger. It’s also true that most families do have at least some part of the whole that is dysfunctional. The truth is that the fully functional family may not exist! While the specifics of your experience may be different that most people, the fact that your experience is adverse is not at all unique. We haven’t all been chased by angry giraffes, but almost all of us has experienced some level of trauma.

Another way to understand these adversities is that while the specifics of the event will likely differ from person to person, the adversity therein is common to most if not all of humanity. In fact, although I have met people who claimed to have lived a charmed life the truth is that all of them were in denial about their lives or lying to me. I believe we all encounter significant adverse experiences. I also believe they serve a purpose. Human beings grow, and ultimately evolve as individuals and as a species, by virtue of working through these challenges. Now, only a masochist would welcome lousy experiences. I am not suggesting we should jump up and down in celebration of an adverse experience. I am suggesting we shouldn’t feel singled out because something bad happens.

If we come to see these experiences as a normal part of a normal life, we will go a long way to moving from feeling like a victim (and everything that goes with it) toward feeling like a competent human being who is in charge of their life. That shift alone will make handling adversity much easier. We are not more competent when we wring our hands and ask,”why me?” In fact, questions like “why me” keep us backward focused at the time when we most need to be looking ahead! So, instead of asking “why me,” ask “what’s next?”