No phrase has been as helpful in my life as “it wasn’t meant to be”. It’s one of my wife’s favorite sayings.
Each stage in our lives are filled with its own unique challenges. During this journey through life, we try many things. Some that work while many fail. “It wasn’t meant to be” serves multiple purposes during these times of disappointment.
Most directly, it tries to comfort us when we are so frustrated or down because something did not work.
This phrase also stops us from fabricating the many stories we do explaining to ourselves why something did not work. Our stories all are the same. We say that it wasn’t us but them or this happened and rarely do we look at how we impacted the outcome. When we say and believe “it wasn’t meant to be” after we fail, it saves us time by stopping us from creating stories that have no impact on our tomorrow. Especially since most of our stories do not include the valuable component of self-reflection.
More subtly, it is there to remind us that there are always more options or different ways to achieve the same thing. There have been numerous times that things did not work out that later did in a slightly different way or at a later time or through a different person.
You see, failure today should not stop us from trying to achieve our dreams tomorrow. We must always remember that it wasn’t meant to be simply means not today, not in this way, nor in this manner.
Believing and reminding ourselves often about this helpful phrase “it wasn’t meant to be” can help you get through some of your darkest days. Giving you the rest you need to keep on trying.