Pushing New Limits
The new year is one month old and, if you made New Year’s resolutions, you may have run smack into the brick wall known as Real Life. In Real Life, achieving goals and moving toward your dream is sometimes very hard. In fact, most of the time it’s very hard. That’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Doing the easy work and avoiding the hard work is what gives us lives that we want to change. As a wise man once said, “Successful people do the things that other people aren’t willing to do.”
So even if you’ve worked very hard so far, you may be feeling as though you’re not making progress. You likely have had some setbacks, sometimes known as “reverse progress.” Don’t sweat it if you have, because that’s one of the secrets of success. Here are some tips to help you through this rough patch.
Six Ways to Handle Setbacks
1. Recognize that when you’re pushing yourself to new limits, setbacks are inevitable. Improvement doesn’t come when you reach a particular goal. It comes when you do the work to reach that goal.
2. Recognize that setbacks aren’t permanent. They’re the universe’s way of telling you that either a) you haven’t done the proper preparation to reach your goal, or b) your goal was just a bit too ambitious this time, but keep working on it.
3. Understand that it’s okay to be disappointed. As human beings, we are allowed to experience our emotions. Not receiving or achieving something you’ve worked for is a good time to be disappointed. But…
4. Don’t wallow in self-pity. Disappointment can energize you to work smarter and/or harder. Self-pity sucks the life out of you. Focus your thoughts on what you might change so you can achieve your goal, and avoid thoughts that center on blame or negative emotions.
5. Examine your plan. To paraphrase Robert Burns, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. We’re all imperfect, so it’s not realistic to expect to make a plan that’s perfect from start to finish. Look at what caused your setback, where your plan went wrong, and make appropriate adjustments.
6. Make your adjustments “appropriate.” When you’re trying to change your life, you begin that change from a particular point, with a limited amount of knowledge. If you suffer a setback, don’t fall back on where you were when you started. The process of change has educated you in some way. You’ve learned things, you’re more mature, you’re more aware, you recognize situations that either contribute to your success or contribute to your failure. Use your experience to make adjustments that will help you.
Australian surfing coach Phil McNamara made a great observation on setbacks.
“If you’re feeling the discomfort of facing a huge challenge, that’s actually a great place to be in. It’s a privilege to be there. A lot of people will never get the chance to feel the fear of great failure, or the exhilaration of great success. And if there’s a fear of great failure, there’s probably a chance that a great win is about to happen. That’s living, in my opinion.”
#CleanIn2014
