What To Do When One Door Closes

Look for alternatives when one door closes
There is one thing that is an absolute truth in life – when one door closes other doors will open. There are so many different opportunities and directions to go in life that doors are always waiting for you to go through them and experience what is beyond them. You just have to choose which ones you want to go through.

Nobody can deny that when a door closes you are forced to look for different ways of doing things, which leads you to new doors and new paths. But, when a door closes, there are some things you need to do to make sure that you find those new doors and paths. Following are some things you must consider with some powerful examples of why.

Remember That It Was Meant To Close
Usually, when one door closes, we are meant to go in a new direction. We may not see that clearly at the moment, but in hindsight, it is crystal clear. The door we thought meant so much to us turns out to be a hindrance to our success, and we can only clearly see that when we have walked through another door and see a new path that pushes us further towards our success. Perhaps one of the best examples of this is a job loss where we can’t get over how much the job means to us.

One accountant I know lost his high paying job. He didn’t love the job, but it gave him the freedom to buy what he wanted to buy and do what he wanted to do, so when he was let go, he felt like it wasn’t meant to close. He got busy looking for a new job, but he still thought he would never find anything as good as the job he was let go from. After a few more failed jobs, he was convinced that the first job was his dream job, and work would never feel as good as it did back then. Then, he was hired at a place he would have never considered previously. He took the job because it was the only job available. It was the only door open. Twenty years later, he is still at that job, and it is his dream job. It’s allowed him to grow in so many ways that he was never capable of doing at that first job. He makes more money, and he loves to go to work each day. And in hindsight, he can see that the first job needed to end so he could find his way to this job.

Nail That Door Shut If You Have To!
Sometimes when one door closes, we try to reopen it many times throughout our lives. And sometimes we are successful doing so! For instance, after a job loss (even the loss of a job we hate), we may try to keep getting that job back instead of looking for another door that will lead us down a different and possibly better path. Then when we get that job back, things go bad again and soon we are wondering why we even bothered opening the door again.

Sometimes you have to nail that door shut behind you and let go of the notion of it ever opening again. If the situation was negative, abusive, or hurtful in any way, then it is better left shut. Don’t waste your time going back through that door and trying to recapture something that isn’t there. There are plenty of other doors for you to choose from, and they all offer new experiences for your life.

A friend of mine once dated a drug addict. He couldn’t hold down a job. He used her for money and her kindness, and he lied to her all the time. It took a while, but eventually she was able to leave him and move on. She thought the door was closed, but it turns out she hadn’t nailed it shut. She hadn’t totally let go of the idea that he could be a decent guy in her life. One day he showed up at her house begging her to come back to him. He told her that he wasn’t doing drugs anymore, and she was the only good thing in his life. She opened the door back up and let him in, and it took another year of crying, pain, and struggle for her to shut that door again. But, when she did, she nailed it shut. She vowed never to fall for his lies again, and opening it back up wasn’t even an option for her. She ended up finding the perfect guy through another door.

Stop Looking At The Closed Door!
When one door closes, take your attention away from it. If you stay focused on the closed door, then you cannot see the new one that has been opened for you. Again, a breakup is a great example of this!

We all know what it is like to dwell on a past relationship. We think about that person, what could have been, all the fun we had, and how sad we are that the relationship is over. In other words, we sit and stare at the closed door thinking about what is on the other side. Unfortunately, that means we are not looking around for other doors. We are too busy wondering if that door can open back up or why it closed in the first place. The result is that we let a few good people, who are standing behind an open door, slip through our fingers, and their doors end up closing on us before we even noticed they were open.

An older man I know shared a story with me relating to this. He had lost his first wife to another man, and all he could focus on was the betrayal. He spent every night looking at her picture, cursing her name, and trying to come up with ways to get back at her. He didn’t even want her back! But he couldn’t stop looking at that door that had been closed for him. A female co-worker was his sounding board. She would listen to him whenever he needed to talk. And, she attempted to do things for him to make him feel better. But he couldn’t stop staring at that closed door. One day he went to work and the woman who had spent so much time trying to help him wasn’t there. It turns out she died the night before from a heart attack. Suddenly he realized how much she had meant to him and how good of a partner she would have been for him, and he was then looking at the closed door of his coworker and not the ex who betrayed him. He never even got to see the open door clearly because his focus was on an ex who didn’t even care about him.

So, stop looking at closed doors because it will force you to miss ones that are open and may be closing soon. You will regret looking at that closed door eventually.

Expect More Closed Doors To Follow
A lot of people I talk to can’t handle it when one door closes. The thought of any more closing beyond that just gets depressing for them, and they start to view that particular area of life as non-achievable.

Moreover, some people are not willing to accept that more than two or three doors need to close sometimes in order to find the perfect door. For instance, I know plenty of people who have had a relationship end and stay pretty positive that something better is coming their way. But, when another relationship ends not long after, they start to give up on love and their attitude towards relationships turns negative, which affects their ability to see any potentially awesome people out there. This can get very sad!

One man I know didn’t date much in his younger years because he thought love wasn’t for him. He was kind, good looking, and gentle, but he didn’t put himself out there to date for fear of rejection. Eventually, around the age of 35, the need for a woman in his life outgrew his fear, and he decided to date. His first relationship ended up in a marriage, but she died two years later from cancer. When that door closed, he confirmed his suspicions and developed a core belief that he was meant to be single. He didn’t bother looking for any more open doors because he didn’t believe they would exist. He is in his late 70’s now and has never dated again.

Doors are going to close a lot in your life. It doesn’t mean you don’t deserve something in life. It just means that they were not the right doors to walk through to get it.

Don’t Be Scared Of The Open Doors
When one door closes there will be a lot of new opportunities. And you will be faced with the decision whether you should go through those new doors or not. My suggestion is to go for it. Don’t stand in the hallway and wonder if it is the right door. Don’t try to guess what will happen if you go through that door instead of another one. Standing in the hall may cause you to miss the opportunity to go through a door that is open, and as it closes, the pain of not knowing what could have happened on the other side will lead to a lot of regrets.

I’m not going to use a specific example for this because, as we know from hospice caretakers who have talked to the dying, not going through open doors that they wanted to go through is the number one regret of the dying. They regret not having the courage to live in a way that was true to themselves because they were too busy standing in the hallways or going through doors that they didn’t want to go through. As they look back on their life and know that they have no more chances to go through any doors, besides the door of death, they realize how many dreams they left unfulfilled. You don’t want to end up like that, so never miss an opportunity to go through a door that looks interesting to you while you can.

Kick Down A Door You Really Want Open
Sometimes you may see a door that you would like to go through, even though it isn’t open. In that case, you need to kick down the door and make your own path. It will take some work in order to get it open. You may need to go to school. You may need to do some improvement on yourself. You may need to seek help from someone else to open the door. You may need to practice, learn, move past your fears, or take on more work. When a door is there that you want to go through, you will know what you need to do.

Just because a door is closed doesn’t mean it’s not for you. Sometimes the best paths and the best lessons lay behind a door that is closed to you until you take some action towards opening it.

For example, one man I talked to told me that he wasn’t supposed to amount to anything. He grew up poor. He grew up in an abusive household. He was told daily that he was worthless and incapable of achieving anything. When he graduated high school, he had no money to go to college and had no way of getting any money. He wanted to go to college, and saw great things behind that door, but he believed that it was impossible. Finally, as he was working at a fast food place and being treated like crap by his manager, he decided that he was going to go to college. He started talking to people in his community about his desire to go to college. He talked to anyone who listened, even strangers he sat beside in the park. He had never expressed this desire before because he felt that people would laugh at him or ridicule him, but he felt compelled to talk about it because it was something he now wanted so badly. One day, a man came into his place of employment, asked him if he was the kid who wanted to go to college so badly, and offered to help him get into college and pay for his tuition – no strings attached. It turned out that the man was wealthy and was looking to give back in a big way for the chances that he had been given to get to where he was. The door was kicked down, he went to college and graduated at the top of his class, and now he is doing what he loves to do despite the odds.

Don’t Get Upset When Your Closed Door Opens For Someone Else
Lastly, when one door closes for you, it can open up for other people. It will be tempting to get upset and start focusing on that door again, but don’t. Remember that the door has closed for a reason, and if someone else found it open, then that door was meant for them.

For example, a woman who got a divorce from her husband watched as another woman opened up her closed door and proceeded to date her husband and get married to him. She felt like that closed door was supposed to stay closed, and she suffered from the fact that someone else had been better than her to open that door and make what was behind it work. That suffering caused her to miss a lot of open doors. It wasn’t until she accepted that the other woman and her ex-husband were meant to be together that she was able to move on and start dating again. She now feels like those years of suffering was a waste of time. You can learn from her regret and let things work out the way they want to with the doors you’ve closed.