This is not a formula, but a suggestion which emerged today from my own personal process. I thought to share with you and hoped you'd share your own suggestions.
This is about the inevitable---loss. We're all going to experience it one way or another from small incidents like finding our car in the parking lot with a new dent in it, to the death of a dear friend.
I think that the grief is unavoidable. We must feel the emotion. And each event and each person will have their own timing. However, it seems to me, from experience of my own and observing my patients, that trying to skip the feeling only postpones it.
At the same time, it seems beneficial not to prolong it, if possible. Feel it and then be done with it. If we try to avoid the suffering, it will 'come back to bite us'.
I am reminded of a former patient who came in because five years previously he had lost a relationship and dealt with it by immediately 'moving on'. So, five years later, it had suddenly come up full force and he was in grief.
While we cannot tell another when their sorrow should come to an end, we can give ourselves the best chance of a time-limited mourning if we let ourselves have it (completely-with anger, crying or whatever the feeling is) and then bring it to a close.
I think it is easier to heal and carry on with a productive attitude if you have a good measure of positive things going on in your life. So, it behooves us to continue to "...make our own happiness", to nurture that which sustains us in our individuality, and to remember to be grateful.
The good stuff will prevent you from staying overlong in your sadness by beckoning to you; you will be attracted to that which brings you joy.
To buffer yourself against the adversities that are bound to appear, try to go heavy on the activities and relationships that you truly treasure.
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