By Joe Byerly
Have you ever been knocked off your feet?
I’m not talking about getting sucker-punched in a 1 a.m. bar fight or settling an old high school grudge by the flagpole. I mean those moments when life takes a swing and sends you sprawling. A relationship falls apart. The job you were counting on goes to someone else. The doctor tells you it’s more than just a pulled muscle.
Almost every setback, in some form or fashion, can be a setup for something greater. The challenge is seeing it that way.
When we look back on those moments, the ones that left us flat on the proverbial barroom floor, it’s easy to get stuck on the loss. To continually replay the pain, the disappointment, the sharp realization that life will never be the same.
But what if we widened our view? What if we recognized that the loss was actually a prerequisite—a necessary step toward something better, even if it doesn’t feel that way at the time?
Artist Julia Cameron calls it a gain disguised as a loss.
That heartbreak? It led you to the right relationship. The missed opportunity? It redirected you to where you were meant to be. The injury? It forced you to slow down and focus on something more important.
Reflecting on my own life, most of my greatest gains came from losses. Even the ones that still sting taught me something valuable. At a minimum, they forced me to pay attention to life’s lessons in a way I might not have otherwise. Some of those losses even closed doors that needed to be closed, leading me to open new ones I wouldn’t have considered.
I know it’s easier with time, distance, and healing to look back and connect the dots in hindsight. But when loss is fresh and when we’re still lying on the floor, we don’t see a pattern. We just see a single dot. No bold line leading to the next one. No clear path forward. And that’s scary, maybe even a little depressing.
But if every past loss eventually revealed itself as a stepping stone to growth or something better, then we can use that same lens to view the one we are experiencing now or the one that will catch us by surprise next week. Maybe, even in the pain and uncertainty, there is a growth opportunity waiting to be uncovered.
Many losses, in time, can reveal themselves as gains. But we have to be willing to pick ourselves up off the floor, wipe the blood from the corners of our lips, and keep moving. The dots will connect, and when they do, we will see the gain.
Joe Byerly is the founder and director of From the Green Notebook and host of the podcast. He officially retired from the U.S. Army on August 31, 2024. If this post resonated with you or sparked any questions, feel free to reach out to him at Joe@fromthegreennotebook.com.
