When your life hits a rough patch, there's nothing wrong with shedding a few tears, but “you have to persevere,” said the late billionaire Charlie Munger.
“You can cry, sure. But you can’t stop,” Munger told CNBC’s Becky Quick last month, shortly before his death at age 99. While sharing his tips for success and longevity, Munger said challenging times are inevitable in everyone's life.
“The important thing is how you deal with it and then move on,” he said: “Somehow you get through it as a soldier. If your military service requires you to walk through the streets crying for a few hours a day, then just cry away. But…”..you can’t stop.”
On the surface, Munger's life may have seemed idyllic. He was a successful lawyer and investor, extremely wealthy, and lived a long, seemingly happy life. But his struggles and grief were great: a divorce in his twenties, blindness in one eye as a result of failed cataract surgery and – just two years after his divorce – the death of his nine-year-old son Teddy, who suffered from leukemia.
“I cried the whole time when my first child died,” Munger said. “But I knew I couldn’t change [anything]. At that time, the mortality rate for childhood leukemia was 100%.”
According to experts, your ability to bounce back from difficulties or disappointments, whether in your personal life or at work, is crucial to your success and happiness in the long run. “I don’t believe there is a skill more critical to success than resilience,” Wharton organizational psychologist and best-selling author Adam Grant told CNBC Make It in 2017.
This can often mean that you need to properly grieve or process your disappointment before moving on. As Munger noted, crying can be a healthy way to do this: It literally helps you let go of emotional stress by releasing endorphins, research shows.
In contrast, suppressing these emotions can worsen a variety of mental and physical health problems.
“The iron rule of life is: Everyone fights,” Munger said. People who can muster the strength to keep going – and sometimes learn a valuable lesson in the process – are more likely to lead happy and successful lives.
“This is your only option. You can't bring back the dead, you can't heal the dying child. You can’t do everything possible,” Munger said. “You have to persevere as a soldier.”
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