A Guide for People Who Lose Absolutely Everything:

For many people, there is nothing more frustrating than losing a valuable item. Whether it be a cell phone, sentimental memory, wallet, driver’s license, etc., losing things can be a constant pain. Whether you lose something that belongs to yourself or belongs to someone else, it’s never a good feeling to know that you misplaced something valuable and now you have to go look for it. If you aren’t able to find it, then you have to put time into trying to replace it. Often times it requires money, time, and effort to replace missing items, and there are some things that you lose which can never be replaced. It can also cost you job opportunities, school opportunities, and just life opportunities in general if you are being an absent-minded in a time of great importance in your life.

The pain of losing things and consequences can affect your self-esteem and self-interest, and can really be a pain for anyone who has deal with your constant losing of things. As a man who is constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY, absent-minded, I know what you are going through. I have loss my wallet, my phone, my driver’s license, my debit card, my glasses, and several other constant things throughout the years. According to pretty much everyone I know, I lose things “too much for an adult”, and I have been tormented about it by friends, classmates, teachers, my parents, and virtually everyone that knows me. I know what it is like to lose something important and then lose your self-esteem because of it, and the carelessness people associated with it. Nevertheless, here are some things I find helpful when things go missing in my life.

Keep Calm under Pressure (Don’t Panic).

One of the most common things, if not the most obvious thing, that I see people do when they lose something, is that they freak out and start panicking right away. They turn over pillows, start calling people left and right, and they go from zero to one-hundred real quick (Drake Reference). If it’s something especially important such as spike cleats for a track meet or an important presentation for a business meeting, you will even see the most emotionally-stoic people on the planet get angry/frustrated. Some of the most emotionally stable people in my life (some of my close friends, mentors, and coaches) have gone absolutely furious over losing something important. The issue with this reaction however, is that it takes energy away from trying to resolve/fix the issue that is at hand, and it projects emotional insecurity/unstableness to the outside world. When I notice that I am missing something important/need worth (which happens almost every day to me), I first try to silence my angry thoughts and figure out where I could have left that important information. I ask people for help, use local resources to track down if someone might have picked up somewhere, and try to remember the last available time I might have had. To me, I’ve had a lot more success finding my missing items when I am calm compared to when I’m upset, and I am able to solve my issues more efficiently because of having that mindset.

Understand And Accept Other People’s Reactions

Something that needs to be understood about losing other people’s possessions and your own possessions, is that by and large, it that it is going to have some kind of impact on other people’s moods. For a majority of people unfortunately, that reaction is going to be negative/demoralizing. Few people, if anybody, are going to not do anything or forgive your instantly for losing something that has value to them, and will have a hard time trusting you with their things in future issues. If you lose something that belongs to your boss during your job or what not, the chances that they will look on you as an unreliable employee will be a lot greater than if you didn’t lose it. People who are close to you will also get frustrated by your constant absent-mindedness, as it makes you look unorganized and sloppy in the eyes of others. I remember that during high school, my wrestling coach would get super furious every time that I would lose headgear and other pieces of equip, and he would get on my back about it all the time during school and during practice. It even got so bad that my coach made up a warm-up routine where all the wrestlers had to run around the room and search for their headgear, and ultimately resulted in people throwing their headgear across the wrestling room. This frustrated me to a great deal as I knew that I wasn’t trying to lose things, I just happened to be very careless at the absolute wrong times. Overtime, I found that listening to their concerns and understanding why they are angry helps me try to diminish the negative effect that other people reactions have on me, and to understand how serious of an issue being absent-minded is. By understanding that my coach/teammates are natural human beings with everyday concerns and they are angry for obvious reasons, it was much easier to see how my absent-mindedness was affecting them and that I needed to work harder on it. If the situation of absent-mindedness is to be solved, the important thing is to understand is that people are going to get anger at you because your absent-sidedness is effecting the way the interact with you, and not necessarily because they want to victimize you in front of everyone.

Don't Let It Affect Your Self-Esteem

To me, the biggest thing that let my absent-mindedness get worse was letting it hurt my self-esteem. The minute I’d lose something, I would immediately feel awful about myself, and I would frantically search for items without taking the time to engage in a proper search. I would led my anger get the better of me and I’d started thinking that I was less of a person than other people. This only made the situation worse as I grew even more careless and began to start withdrawing from interacting with others, which in the end made my life a whole lot more difficult. It is important to recognize that even the most-organized people lose things from time to time, and they can even lose important things that matter to them in the near future. The difference between organized people who hardly lose anything and people who are absent-minded all the time, is that they are able to recognize the situation without letting it get to their head. Understand that if you lose something, it’s not going to be the end of the world, and work to find a way to resolve the situation without personally bagging on yourself.

Find People Who Will Be Willing To Help You Get Organized

Like most chronic issues, the biggest thing that a person who is constantly absent-minded can do is to recognize that it isn’t something that you can solve entirely on your own. Absent-mindedness, like anything done with frequency, can become a habit, which makes it difficult to kick without any outside support. It really helps to have friends or classmates/coworkers/bosses etc. that are willing to help teach you strategies that will prevent you from losing things constantly. People who lose things rarely are normally the ones who have the most efficient system of holding on to their belongings, and have a system of knowing where everything is. This is one of the main ways I am trying to kick my absent-mindedness habit, as I have friends at St. Thomas who are more organized then I am that I can watch to see how they hold on to their stuff. By trying to emulate what there organization patterns are and apply them to my life, I find it easier to be able to keep track of things that are important to me and other items that I need.

Understanding that Absent-Mindedness Can Be Fixed With Practice

All in All, the most important thing to understand from this article is that Absent-mindedness is what it implies: a mindset. The difference between being absent-minded and just happening to lose something is that it is a repetitive behavior that happens time and time again. Being absent-minded doesn’t mean that you are incapable of holding onto things, it simply means that holding onto things is harder for you than it is for other people. Everybody has their own strengths and weaknesses, and being absent-minded is weakness that some people struggle with while others don’t. The good news, for you and me, is that absent-mindedness can be fixed through doing all of the things above plus countless other things that I haven’t mentioned. I admit that I am still far away from learning how to cure my absent-mindedness, but I know that from following the things that I talked about in my article, I now have the resources I need in order solve the problem that is absent-mindedness. While my past with absent-mindedness is something that I know will constantly be in the back of my head, I understand now that being absent-minded doesn’t have to be an issue for me in the future, and I can work to fix the absent-mindedness that has troubled me for many years. Part of it may be because I am still an immature college student whose still is learning the ropes, but I now have a system in place that will help me grow out of this situation as I continue to get older. If you dedicate your time to solve your absent-mindedness, I guarantee you it will get better as time goes on.