Life is full of ups and downs.
When it comes to evaluating life’s ups and downs, especially those downs, I find this quote from Vivian Komori so helpful: “Life is not about how fast you run or how high you climb, but how well you bounce.”
Since life is rarely plain sailing, being able to bounce back after setbacks is a crucial skill.
Did you know that elite athletes judge their level of fitness not so much on their actual achievements as their recovery time? It seems to me that we should look at ourselves in the same way…
…we should assess our ‘recovery time’ after we’ve hit one of those metaphorical brick walls that leaves us feeling discouraged. Most of the time we have the strength and determination to get back on the horse and carry on where we left off.
Sometimes, though, encountering these obstacles doesn’t result in a temporary blip after which you can pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again. Instead, it hits you with a real wallop, leaving you feeling discouraged, down-hearted, depressed, and even utterly defeated, not sure what your next move should be. Clawing your way back up seems too hard. You’re overwhelmed. Bouncing back feels impossible.
It’s a bit like the board game you may have played as a kid, Snakes and Ladders…
You make steady progress along the board with a few leg-ups from helpful ladders until you’re unlucky enough to encounter a snake and find yourself slithering backwards. Mostly, the setbacks (snakes) are brief (short).
You can get yourself back on track easily enough and maybe even go on to win, feeling smug that you’ve overcome the trials along the way. But sometimes, when you can smell victory, you’re unlucky enough to land on a long snake that’ll take you right back to where you started. The winning square then seems way too far off and defeat seems inevitable. It’s oh-so-easy to just give up and duck out of the game altogether.
Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a game which better emulates real life experience. The problem is that life’s not a game and, in reality, giving in to these negative responses to setbacks can be at best damaging and at worst destructive.
So, what can you do when you find yourself overwhelmed with these emotions?
Let’s look at some strategies you can use.
1. Recognize that failure is a part of progress.
So, something didn’t go your way and now you’re feeling a bit mentally battered and bruised.
Dr. Jennifer Guttman, one of America’s leading psychologists, says you need to change your mindset away from any feeling of failure and instead embrace what you’ve learnt from the mistake.
Remind yourself – regularly – that virtually nothing worthwhile has ever been achieved without a number of false starts and setbacks.
It’s all part of the development process that ultimately results in something meaningful.
You need to recognize that it’s far better to do something less than perfectly than to do nothing perfectly.
Yes, when you’ve hit a bump in the road it’ll hurt for a while – that’s part of the potentially long and rocky process that ultimately ends with success.
Truman Capote summed this up far better than I ever could when he said: “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”
I know it sounds oxymoronic, but if you can successfully embrace the positive nature of failure, allow it to motivate you, and not to be discouraged or defeated by it, you’re on the road to success.
2. Focus on the next step, not the destination.
Sometimes we’re faced with challenges that seem beyond our abilities.
We look at a goal or dream and we struggle to imagine ourselves achieving it because it seems so far away.
To avoid becoming discouraged, try not to think about the destination you want to reach and the effort required to get there.
Instead, concentrate on the next step you have to take.
Focus on the action that will move you that bit closer to the end goal, but don’t worry about how much closer it got you.
Just focus on doing it well, to the best of your abilities.
Slow progress in the right direction is better than no progress at all.
Eventually, slow progress might turn into great strides as you begin to believe in yourself a little more and the finish line comes into sight.
3. Make a choice to look on the bright side.
When you’re feeling discouraged, you need to make a conscious choice to be positive and optimistic. Yes, we know “positive thinking” is a bit annoying, but according to the Mayo Clinic (and countless others), it’s benefits are vast.
Choosing the default ‘the whole world’s against me’ setting will only intensify the negative spiral you’re in.
It can be hard to adopt a determinedly positive attitude and at first you may need to put on an act, as if you’re kidding yourself and others around you.
You may feel that the phrase ‘fake it till you make it’ is overused, but it really can work.
Try it.
Over time you’ll find that your default setting will become more upbeat and less easily dented by disappointments.
4. Let it go.
Chances are that you’re burdened with quite a bit of anger over past mistakes you’ve made or injustices you’ve experienced.
Carrying all that negativity around with you will weigh you down and make it harder to be positive in the face of setbacks.
You’re likely to feel overwhelmed and inadequate.
You really do need to let these angry feelings go if you’re going to beat your demons.
They’re clearly not going to melt away magically and it will take effort from you to achieve this.
The place to start is by acknowledging your anger and your right to have those feelings.
Recognize, however, that it’s self-destructive to focus on such negative emotions.
There are a couple of strategies you can try.
Deep breathing can be an effective way of controlling anger, as can taking a time out.
Some people find journaling a great way to vent their frustrations.
Do your best to move through the anger, rather than getting mired down in it and shift your focus onto your goals instead.
5. Don’t compare yourself to others.
Why do we do this?
Most of us are guilty of it and there are few people who can genuinely say that they don’t waste valuable mental effort on such a pointless activity.
Sizing yourself up against your family, friends, or colleagues can only lead to one thing: discouragement and needless angst.
Remember that you’re only seeing the outside face that others choose to show to the world.
You’ve no idea what obstacles and setbacks they’ve had to endure to get where they are now.
And all may not be as rosy as it looks in that particular garden anyhow.
You are you.
You need only to focus on the hoops you’ll need to jump through to reach your own goals and be the best you can.
6. Prove your doubters wrong.
Do you feel discouraged because of something someone said?
Perhaps someone has ridiculed your dreams or told you that you’ll never amount to anything.
Or maybe you have taken some other comments more personally than you needed to and this has hurt your self-belief.
Either way, if you can shift your mindset from one that believes what other people say to one that is determined to prove them wrong, it can provide the energy and motivation to keep going.
While it may feel nice to put them in their place, don’t do it for this reason. Do it for yourself.
Prove them wrong by proving yourself right.
7. Take a step back and remember the world doesn’t revolve around you.
This is easier than you might think, although it does take a conscious effort, and it really is one of the basic keys to shifting your mindset from negative to positive.
Almost all of us are guilty of thinking that we’re the center of the universe.
That means we can only see events subjectively, from our own perspective.
Trouble is, when you’re playing the starring role in your own show, it’s easy to feel sorry for yourself when you’ve taken a knock or things haven’t panned out the way you’d hoped.
It also allows those nagging doubts to come flooding in when you realize that you’re not the stellar act you’d previously thought.
What can you do about this?
Try to reset your self-centered perspective by thinking about how you might help others instead.
Achieving something positive for them will help to restore your self-belief.
This doesn’t have to be anything huge. Even small gestures will help you to feel more positive and you’ll begin to climb out of that well of despondency.
Once you start thinking about what others need, you’ve succeeded in shifting your perspective away from yourself as the central character.
You’ll find it’ll help to lessen the burden of those gloomy feelings, defeat and discouragement.
8. Quit complaining – it doesn’t help.
When things don’t go our way, it’s all too easy to complain loudly to anyone who cares to listen.
Is this helpful and does it improve our state of mind?
No.
The truth is that whining about where you are now won’t ever get you where you’d like to be.
It won’t make you happier and it’s really just a waste of time and energy that could be better spent on something more productive.
I have a personal example of how powerful not complaining can make you…
When I cycled from London to Paris in 2012 in a charity challenge, my right knee gave in to a very painful bursitis on early on day 2 of 4 days’ hard cycling.
I wasn’t even half way to my goal and still had a whole lot of miles ahead of me.
Quitting just wasn’t an option with all that sponsorship behind me.
Now, I’m not saying it wasn’t really tough to keep pedaling in spite of the pain (assisted by a veritable cocktail of medications, I’ll admit), but I did.
Although cycling alone (albeit with 100 others, just no one I knew) might seem like a disadvantage when things got so tough, in reality it made carrying on more achievable rather than less.
Why?
Because I didn’t have anyone to complain to.
Absolutely no moaning was possible, so I just got on with it, sang out-of-tune Disney songs up the (many) hills as the miles ticked painfully by till the time came for my victory loop around the Eiffel Tower.
I know that if there’d been anyone who’d listened to my woes, I’d have moaned and groaned, given in to the negative gremlins and quite possibly thrown in the towel altogether.
It was a great (if painful) life lesson that’s served me well since.
I was also given an invaluable piece of advice by one of my more inspiring teachers a long time ago.
He said that putting just a little of the energy you waste on complaining into fixing the problem, would pretty soon result in a solution.
He talked good sense.
Just the act of complaining undermines your equilibrium and allows despondency, discouragement and ultimately defeat to take over.
Avoid it.
If you quit whining and refuse to accept that you’re merely a victim, you’ll pretty soon realize just what an unstoppable force you can be in the face of adversity.
Try it!
9. Accept that now may be time to make a change.
When we’re wallowing in a pool of self-pity, downright discouraged and feeling defeated, it’s only natural to look for someone or something to blame.
Once we’ve identified the source of our misery, that’s when the complaining starts, railing against the injustice or injury.
And you already know about the dangers of complaining…
What we should be doing is looking within, considering how we’re feeling and getting a strategy in place to respond.
Maybe you need a change of heart or a change in your point of view or even a change in the way you go about things.
There may be nothing you can do to change external things, but you can alter the way you look at them.
Once you’ve changed your perspective, you’ll often find that those outside things you had no influence over start to change, too.
Then you’re primed for action to make a positive change, leaving discouragement and defeat way behind you.
