Who among us has not experienced "failure?" Rebounding is about the process of rediscovering, reinventing, and recovering yourself in the face of a personal or professional setback or failure. It is about learning how to suck the juice out of a lemon and turn it into lemonade, picking yourself up, dusting yourself off, and moving on with the business of living at hand . . . emerging even stronger, wiser, and with more confidence than before! We all have a unique set of experiences, talents, and gifts - all of which present opportunities for growth and for unique perspective. Blending personal experience with practical suggestions for reengaging, Rebounding presents a perspective that gives one the space to breathe in the face of a failure and learn how to turn that liability into one of your greatest assets. With a rare sense of vulnerability, the author opens up about some of her greatest challenges and what core beliefs created an ability to experience an inner resilience that many never talk about. Sharing the failure of a business, the failure of a marriage, and struggles with her recent financial reality, she creates in Rebounding a unique chance to get inside the ebbs and flows of life and examine the real power of personal choice in the face of adversity. Word Count: 212

Rebounding

A Practical Guide for Getting Up (and Getting Over It!)By Theresa Salihu-Musso

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2010 Theresa Salihu-Musso
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4490-7592-7

Contents

Acknowledgements..............................................................viiIntroduction..................................................................ixChapter One: Hard Times 101...................................................1Chapter Two: Reality Bites....................................................6Chapter Three: How Do You Move Forward?.......................................10Chapter Four: Money Matters...................................................21Chapter Five: Creating Your Own Economy.......................................26Chapter Six: Envisioning a Better Way ... or a Better Day.....................31Chapter Seven: Up and Down: Working Together for Good.........................36Chapter Eight: Unto Thine Own Self be True....................................41Chapter Nine: Living in the Past vs. Living in the Light......................48Chapter Ten: Emergence........................................................54Appendix A: The Rebounding 30-day Radial Action Plan(RAP).....................5630-Day Rebounding RAP Journal.................................................59Select Bibliography...........................................................90About the Author..............................................................92

Chapter One

Hard Times 101

rebound noun 1: a movement back from an impact 2: a reaction to a crisis or setback or frustration verb 1: spring back; spring away from an impact -Merriam-Webster Dictionary

When I started out, I walked on air. I had the brains in my head and the shoes on my feet, Dr. Seuss so aptly wrote, and I really could not be beat. I confidently plunged myself, my family, and my finances in to my new business venture. I was going to beat the odds by being diligent and smart, by tracking down whatever resources I needed to carry on. I was going to offer value and insight.... we were going to change the world. I started a coaching and training agency that was equipped with the most positive people in the world - surely we could beat the odds if anyone could!

A year and a half later, we had lost our largest client due to their own fraud and bankruptcy issues, and had no other major sources of revenue to carry the company. Having invested my life's savings, leveraged all my sources of credit and some of my husband's, I was maxxed out. I liquidated all the assets of the company that I could, including the office building itself, paid off what I could and with my tail between my legs, found myself sitting on over $140,000 of personally-secured debt. I hadn't been smart enough or experienced enough to put all the debts of the company in the company name and so I couldn't bankrupt the company and I was literally left stuck, holding the bag. Sure there were other people I could blame but I was to blame too. Either way, I looked into the future and it looked grim.

On top of it, the economy and my fallback industry, real estate, was taking a major beating. I had nowhere significant to turn. After these years of self-employment, with two small children needing to be picked up from school, etc. I was hesitant to take a "job." I did for awhile, thinking that getting some steady income would help us get back on our feet, but the company turned out to not be so stable itself and I left it several months later (good thing as the company closed its doors a few weeks after I left). Unemployed, without any company left to speak of, holding all this life experience, baggage, and debt, I was floundering in a soup made up of confusion, despair, anger, fear, and borderline depression. It had been almost a year since things had hit the fan, and yet I still wasn't breathing a normal rhythm yet. I plunged myself into an intense exercise routine, thinking that was a good way to work off stress and lose unwanted pounds; although it did manage to keep me sane, I couldn't lose weight due to the internal stresses, and after awhile it felt less than productive. I sent out rounds and rounds of resumes - I wasn't qualified for many jobs outside of my industry and the job market was flooded with people like me due to unemployment being at record levels. I received a few phone calls and got a couple interviews - mostly entry level sales jobs in industries that I had no interest.

I think the thing that made it harder than anything was that my business had been about coaching and training - empowering people to be their best. At MY best, I knew that I loved to speak, train, consult, and write. I just couldn't seem to get that to pay enough consistently yet. Spiritually, I felt wounded in a very deep way. Here I had given my all, everything I knew how to give, to this business and the bottom line was, my best wasn't good enough. How was I going to get up the courage to try anything that really put me out there again, when I may have to face the same failure? My body's stress response system was shot - I wasn't sure if I even had the internal resources to pull it off and yet a job wasn't materializing nor did it seem like that was the long term answer. I was caught between my negative emotional space and the hard realities of the world.

And yet the economy was not going to support my wallowing and processing for long. My husband's work was also being threatened by the economic downturn in the building industry and we had too much personal overhead, having bought a larger, more expensive home while we were making plenty of money. That had upgraded our lifestyle and our budget. There were so many places we needed to make corrections and yet I felt like a deer in the headlights - how was I going to get myself out of this funk and productively tackle the challenges of the hour?

On the surface I was fighting the good fight - I had some part time things lined up that were keeping me busy here and there. I was grocery shopping, preparing holiday meals, entertaining, helping kids with homework, I even bought a new puppy and began training her. I was still exercising, I had been to a therapist, was still talking to my coach regularly.... all the things I was supposed to be doing. On the surface. Beneath that, however, was an inability to handle the hard stuff. I had a pile of bills and paperwork that was neglected on my desk (that I now avoided like the plague), I was blowing off prospective and current clients, I was haphazardly blowing off appointments, I was lying about feeling okay, doing okay, and being okay. I was not okay. Yes, in moments here and there I was, but not really 'okay'.

I asked my husband how he felt, how he handled the bankruptcy of a company he once had. He said he was the bread winner and he didn't have much time to think about it - he just had to get on with it. I perceived that to add a second layer of guilt to the equation - the guilt of not being able for whatever reason to "just get on with it." I had tried to get a job and seemed to fail - I had tried to restart my company, even got a few clients, but was failing to keep them because I just didn't have the internal energy to carry it. I was stuck in a pit and needed out.

Now I wish I could say that hindsight was 20/20. That I could look back and figure out what exactly went wrong so that I could move forward, learn from it, and never regret again. But that is BS. I had bits and pieces of it - but I couldn't figure out why, in pursuing the thing that I felt called to do, I had experienced this level of failure. The one thing that I kept coming back to was my coaching training and feeling sure that my intuition had been right on. I was called to be a writer, speaker, coach, and consultant. I was called to be a business owner. I was called to be independent. Those things I knew - I just had to figure out how to make a living doing it.

I also had to get beyond feeling like a personal failure just because my business failed.

What is that expression? "Don't take it personally"?? Hard not to when it is your butt on the line and your bill collectors are calling daily. Hard not to when every day you have reminders of all that you aren't doing, all that you weren't good enough to be. So let's see, I'm supposed to not take it personally and yet take 100% responsibility and accountability for myself. Yes, that's it - that solves everything! Not.

Well, as it turns out today, taking complete accountability, seeing the hard truth for what it was, was only the first step of the creation of my own personal stimulus plan. It took two years to move myself out of the funk into the light, many many tissues, endless walks, endless talks, and endless prayers. It is in these moments that we get refined, we are built and rebuilt, we are undone and redone, one moment at a time, because finally, at some point, it is time to move on and get on with it. I had to face myself spiritually, mentally, emotionally, financially, and physically exactly where I was along the way so that I could in the end emerge better and stronger than before. This book is about that process but it is also my attempt to grant you the space to fail your way to your own success and to recognize that it is the very audacity that you have to keep engaging in the process (or is it necessity?) that comes to define your success. Your success is today ... you bought the book, didn't you?! Today ends the waiting. Ends the stalling. Ends the floundering. Waiting for the government to create a new economy. Waiting for someone to bring you flowers. Waiting for the rest of your better life to magically begin to unfold. Be fully where you are at and follow me forward. Let's begin, shall we?

The two hardest things to handle in life are failure and success.

Failed in business Age 22 Ran for legislature Age 23 Again failed in business Age 24 Elected to legislature Age 25 Sweetheart died Age 26 Had a nervous breakdown Age 27 Defeated for Speaker Age 29 Defeated for Elector Age 31 Elected to Congress Age 37 Defeated for Congress Age 39 Defeated for Senate Age 46 Defeated for Vice President Age 47 Defeated for Senate Age 49 Elected President of the United States Age 51

The record of Abraham Lincoln.

What age would you have given up? Or have you already?

Chapter Two

Reality Bites

Michelango's huge statue of David was produced from a single block of granite weighing several tons. The block of granite was rejected a century before the master sculptor used it as being unfit for a work of sculpture, yet out of this reject he fashioned his beautiful and inspiring masterpiece. Failure need never be final when faith is present. - Roy L. Laurin

There comes a point when the reality of the situation you are in really sinks in - it IS what is real. The gravity of the task at hand, unraveling the mess, recovering, persevering and moving on can seem overwhelming. "How did I get here?" is the natural question that arises. The trouble with that one is that it leaves you going down the road of the past again.... and again.... and again. While some of this is very good - this is how we will learn and hopefully not repeat the same life lessons - too much of a good thing is no longer good. Ruminating over how you got here is not going to help you move forward. At some point that reality will have to sink in there somewhere.

I have a tendency to live in a remarkably optimistic world - the grass really is greener in my world most of the time. There is always a silver lining- the problem lies therein however. Sometimes to get to the point that reality sinks in, it takes being backed into the "must" corner. I call it this because it is the point at which you have reached no reasonably good alternative. You can no longer avoid, run from, hide in your despair, paint a rosy picture, justify it away, or take a vacation from the truth. Something happens to make this corner appear. The bank puts the foreclosure notice on your door, the electricity goes out, your spouse packs up and leaves, you get sick, or something equally jarring that stops you momentarily in your tracks. The truth of the situation is now in your face and you, my friend, are now in the "must" corner.

You must face reality.

Personally I have been pushed into this corner three times that I can remember vividly. You do, by the way, tend to remember these moments vividly because they are life changing, character-shaping moments. Your back is against the wall and you have to choose. Are you going to choose to rise above, handle it; or are you going to let it break you?

The first time I visited this corner, it was at the end of my first marriage. It was a bright sunny day and we were in a local park to talk at my husband's request. Really we were there because he had to tell me that he wanted our so-called "temporary" separation to be permanent. I remember looking up at the blue blue sky in disbelief that this was actually happening to me - that I was really HERE. I was not being given the option of working it through any longer, we were at the crossroads and I had only to choose my response to the challenge. In those moments, I don't know if you are actually really conscious of the choice in front of you but in my memory I was on some level. After getting over the disbelief and letting the grieving of the moment settle into my aching heart, still looking at that blue sky, I felt gratitude for being me, still being whole, and being able to rise above even this hurt.

It wasn't the optimist speaking then, really - there was no such "oh, everything is going to be alright" nonchalantly being thrown out there. No, this was more of a grounded, deep sense of KNOWING that I could be okay, that I was going to choose life and love over death and giving up. I was, after all, in the "must" corner, I had a beautiful toddler daughter and a son on the way. I had no money, no home, no job, no marriage but I had my health, my loving family, my babies, and my inner strength; my indomitable spirit and my faith that my life was meant to be so much more.

Why is it so often that as humans we have to wait to get pushed into that unfortunate corner before we realize what we have and where we really are in life? I have asked myself this question so many times ... why must we wait until it is imperative to know what we are truly made of? I can actually relate to what extreme sports fanatics are after - the adrenaline rush of feeling the core of yourself rise to the real challenge of living and.... well, LIVE.

**MOTIVACTIONTM MOMENT**

Take a moment and jot down on a piece of paper or in a journal those defining, fork-in-the-road moments in your own life. What came out of them? Did you emerge stronger in the past? What makes you think you won't again this time? KEY: What action does this acknowledgement of your own resiliency in the past motivate you to take right now? What action could you initiate to support your forward motion, to jumpstart your personal stimulus plan?

No one can take those moments from you and fortunately or unfortunately, we can't manufacture them either. Something probably happened in your life to push you into that corner or you wouldn't be reading this book. I am sorry you had to get there but at some point you have to give absolute thanks for those defining moments. You are seeking wholeness again, healing, you are desiring the ability to move past it. See, it hasn't broken you after all, has it?

Hopefully, you are picking up on something by now that resonates with what you have been through. I am hoping that you will see how remarkable and adaptable you are. How resilient and capable. How you can choose gratitude and love even in the darkest moments. I have complete faith that once backed into the "must corner", you will emerge triumphant and stronger than ever before, if that is what you choose.

When the great Polish pianist, Ignace Paderwski, first chose to study the piano, his music teacher told him his hands were much too small to master the keyboard. When the great Italian tenor, Enrico Caruso, first applied for instruction, the teacher told him his voice sounded like the wind whistling through the window. When the great statesman of Victorian England, Benjamin Disraeli, attempted to speak in Parliament for the first time, members hissed him into silence and laughed when he said, "Though I sit now, the time will come when you will hear of me." Henry Ford forgot to put reverse on his first car. Thomas Edison spent two million dollars on an invention which proved to be of little value. Albert Einstein failed his university entrance exams on his first attempt. Don't give up because you failed the first time.

The only time you must not fail is the last time you try. - Charles F. Kettering

When was the last time you tried your best without fear of failure?

Chapter Three

How Do You Move Forward?

Failure is merely an opportunity to start over again, wiser than before. Valor consists in the power of self-recovery. - Emerson

My hope is that before you got backed into the "must corner," you faced some of the reality of your situation and cut some of the negative repercussions off at the pass. You may not have, however, and you may have a big mess to figure out. You may not even know how to unravel the mess and that is why you are reading this. Okay, deep breath, let's start from a place of strength and together figure out which end is up.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Reboundingby Theresa Salihu-Musso Copyright © 2010 by Theresa Salihu-Musso. Excerpted by permission.
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