15 Things To Do When Life Doesn’t Go Your Way

In the novel of Our Lives, plot twists are essential to the richness of the story. They're here to make your Ted Talk more interesting. Maybe you got fired, lost someone, or your flight got delayed, missed your connection, and now you're writing a script about it. The resilience of the human spirit is most profoundly demonstrated in the quiet acceptance of life's unpredictable turns. Winners deal with these turns differently than everyone else.

If you want to be rich, happy, or just be able to live your life after the event, you better watch this until the end because we'll show you how to turn things around. Here are 15 things to do when life doesn't go your way.

Number one: Figure out how much was your fault and how much is chance. You have power over your mind, not outside events. It happened; you can't go back in time and change anything. The most successful people in the world are able to look at past events coldly and figure out where things went South. More often than not, you were missing a crucial piece of information or the ability to judge potential outcomes.

As you go through life, you realize the boat that is time is already flowing. All you can do is barely steer it through smart decision making. All life is, is a gamble. Minimize risk as much as possible and try again.

Number two: Playing the game of "what if," "shoulda," "coulda," "woulda" doesn't help to better your situation. Sure, you'll be tempted to do it. You'll replay it over and over again in your head; you'll change all the words; you'll change the scenario. But no matter what you do, you cannot change the outcome. The only thing it does is trap you in a cycle of regret and inaction.

Inaction is what's keeping you from addressing the present and shaping the future. All the "shakas" are emotionally exhausting and mentally draining. It's a position that you keep in your body, manifesting as frustration. The only thing you can do in that situation is accept it. Acceptance, at this stage, is the only form of progress. That's the thing about regret—it doesn't remind us what we did badly; it reminds us that we know we can do better. And you can only do better once you accept the facts and move on, despite not liking them.

Number three: The silver lining is that the universe will balance things out eventually. The world is not fair, but on a long enough time horizon, everyone tends to get what they deserve. Call it karma, cosmic justice, or whatever you want to call it. The universe might take a long time to do it, but it eventually bends toward justice, toward balance, as all things should be.

Here's something that will help: It's called the law of averages. Through patience and persistence, all outcomes will eventually settle into their statistical expectations, which means that eventually something positive will happen in similar proportion to balance out the negative you've just experienced.

Number four: If you just keep going, eventually you'll be out of the woods. If you're going through hell, keep going. Even the longest night eventually turns into a morning. Even the darkest hour still only has 60 minutes, and whatever other smart saying someone else has said to drive this point across. If this isn't the desired end, then it isn't the end, period.

The only way you truly lose at whatever game you're playing is if you give up or actually die in the process. Since there's no respawn option in real life, you need to change the way you look at the obstacles you're facing. Problems are not stop signs; they're guidelines. They're keeping you aligned with your goals.

As your journey deepens into the forest, you can expect more difficult challenges to come up, but more on this specific argument at number 14.

Number five: As long as you can get online, you're good. As long as you've got some money, you'll be okay. As long as you can get in touch with someone who can help, you'll be okay. Someone out there has specific answers to the problems. In most cases, there's someone who solves your kind of problem for money. Bring those two together for the win.

It used to be a lot more daunting to face any kind of challenge before the internet was around. It's surprising just how much relief a simple Google search or YouTube tutorial can bring. These days, anywhere in the world we are, as long as we've got the internet, we open up our VPN, move our finances around, buy a ticket, arrange transport, and all is good.

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Number six: Angry, tired, and anxious works against you. Emotionally, you're unlikely to think clearly. You're not at your best, and you'll lose because of it. If you're angry, you're unlikely to get other people to do what you want. It's a "you catch more flies with honey" kind of thing. You need to be able to think clearly and play your cards right if you're looking for the best possible outcome.

You act on impulse, and regret is not far behind. If you want to win in life, the person in the arena—the person others see—is a different person than the one you feel like in the moment. Transfer, self-regulate, get what you want, and you'll have time to process it properly later on.

Number seven: The storm will change who you are, and that's the point. A person who never withstands a storm is incomplete. What evolves us is the series of events that polish who we are, very much the way a gemstone is perfected by friction. We went a little more poetic than the old saying, "pressure makes diamonds," and if you appreciate that, hit the like button on this video.

The goal is to become strong, unfuckwithable, no matter what life throws at you. To become so good at navigating life it no longer bothers you. You welcome it because it sets you apart from the millions that would fall to their knees. Difficulties strengthen the mind as working out does to the body.

Number eight: See what the detour is all about. Many things in life are just detours. You'll eventually get to where you want to go; it might just take you a little bit longer than expected, and that's okay. Because the unforeseen detour might lead to the most magnificent vistas if only we allow ourselves to look out the window instead of stare out at the highway.

Sometimes we forget that life is actually about the journey, not the destination. You've got permission to enjoy it right now and not start only after you feel like you've arrived. Sure, there are times for schedules, plans, and the most reviewed spots, but there are lucky accidents in life that you'd be a fool not to see if you only pulled out that stick you've got stuck up your rear.

To keep the poetry thing going on, when life veers off its intended course, off charted territory, one must learn to navigate by the stars, the wind, and your gut—not by the map. The art of living well lies in embracing the imperfections and finding beauty in the unexpected.

Number nine: Figure out the lesson and move on. In the labyrinth of setbacks, one often stumbles upon unexpected treasures of wisdom and resilience. First, you learn, then you remove the "L." The mistake is wasted if you don't learn the lesson, and life has a funny way of making you repeat the same mistake over and over again until you finally learn what it was trying to teach you.

These lessons build up your inventory of wisdom since every mistake is basically a portal to a new discovery. It doesn't take that many mistakes for you to get a good head on your shoulders—one good enough to guide you for the rest of your life. This is part of your evolution, so move on.

Number ten: Your routine is what keeps the boat moving forward. When everything else fails, we fall to the level of our habits and routines. If your habits are great, if you've got good friends, if you're healthy, you'll digest the event differently than someone who will spiral out of the tiniest of inconveniences.

Every one of us has a baseline level of performance and happiness. If you want to do well in life, you'll focus all of your efforts into systematically raising that baseline. You want the bottom of your life to still be something you're comfortable with, something you're even proud of. If the worst thing that ever happens to you is something manageable, congrats! You've built a great life for yourself.

The best part is that this floor is something you can actively build if you know how to do it. It's one of the big priorities any business or life coach will teach their students, but the average person simply doesn't have the guidance or the tools to make that happen—until now.

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Number eleven: Sometimes there's no deeper meaning. Shitty things just happen to good people. To make sense of life, we try to look for meaning, even when there is none. Life can be unpredictably random. Accepting this randomness prevents unnecessary self-blame. While the cause might be random, your reaction is always under your control. This is where you should focus your energy— instead of looking for an explanation from a man above in the clouds.

Or maybe we're wrong. Maybe that's where the next point comes in.

Number twelve: Sometimes it's the universe nudging you toward a more authentic future. If you look back on your life, you'll realize that the moments you thought of as dead ends eventually led to the path you're on today. Maybe you didn't get into the college or university you wanted, but you got your second or third option, and there you met your future wife or husband.

The multiverse is this incredibly vast decision or event tree, and you're just experiencing this current path since it's been working this great so far. Don't mess with it.

We're not big believers in signs or the mystical arts, but large-scale academic studies have shown that optimists outperform pessimists in life. So if you believe the universe is working for you in order to give you this destiny you think you're worth, then so be it. Live your life that way, because you might just end up in a better place than everyone else.

This is why the idea of Heaven and Hell is so fascinating to us, but you know we'll go down that rabbit hole another time.

Number thirteen: Ask yourself what if you're just one or two rejections away from getting your dream fulfilled? Here's the magic trick of handling rejection for the rest of your life. You ready? What if we told you you were exactly 23 "no's" away from getting everything you want in life? How would you go through the rejections that you're getting? Exciting, isn't it?

You'd know for certain that every "no" just gets you closer to that big win that changes everything. You'd be happy to get them out of the way as quickly as possible, right? You would embrace every "no" with a smile on your face. And this is the big secret in life: this is just one of those countdown moments. You've got just a few more of these, or maybe this was the last one until that big "yes." So take another swing, alexer, just see what happens.

Number fourteen: This is the universe asking you how badly you really want it. When we were younger, we put together a vision board for ourselves with all the typical stuff. Above it, we wrote the phrase, "You don't have it because you don't want it enough," because if we really wanted it, we wouldn't waste any time on anything else.

We reminded ourselves daily about this, and it's been one of our most effective mantras. Every time we face a challenge, we look at it as an opportunity to level up. This is the Game of Life testing us on how badly we really want it and if we are ready for the next stage of our life. To this day, this way of looking at life has never failed us, and we think it'll do the same for you if you embrace it.

Number fifteen: Reassess what kind of future you want. If things don't happen the way you wanted them to happen, you're now at a crossroads. You either try again, this time with more experience and a better understanding of the problem, or you change your goals so it factors in the obstacle in such a way that you never have to face it again.

Do not fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy. Instead, reassess your reality, your desires, and the future you want to build based on the information you now have. Either alter the approach or alter the goal; the choice is up to you.

Speaking of pivotal moments when things didn't go as planned, how did you deal with a big moment when life didn't go as you expected it to go? Let us know in the comments.

And since you're one of the few loyal aluxers that watch our video until the very end, here's your bonus: the "save the day" concept. You know, aluxers, we began implementing this concept into our family life. So whenever we have a low day, we never allow it to end without saving the day.

Saving the day means doing something that gives you so much pleasure, pride, or a feeling of blessing that the day feels like it's been saved. Sometimes it's a workout, sometimes it's a good meal, a great cocktail, or some gelato. Sometimes it's just some one-on-one time with your partner laughing. Do it with your friends. Keep everyone in check. "Hey, how did you save the day today?"

It's one of those things that only benefits you and those around you, so use it freely, pass it along, and save the day. If you've made it to this part of the video, please write the phrase "save the day" in the comments—just out of curiosity. Let's see how many people are going to save the day today. We'll do our best to hang around in the comments for those of you who do.