Have you ever slipped and fallen on your face in front of your friends. Ever been dumped by your date? What about that stupid thing you said that made everybody laugh at you? How did you feel? What did you do?
Such setbacks can be both humiliating and frustrating, especially when you allow it to get to you. So, what can you do? One option is to hide in the closet for the rest of the year, but this will achieve little. The better option is to rise above the setback. This means you make the best of it.
How do you do this? You start with not making it more serious than it is. So what if you tripped, lots of people do. What is important now is how you deal with it. As a matter of fact, what you do about it is what people will remember. For example, two weeks later they can either describe you as, “That guy who fell and looked so embarrassed afterwards” or “That guy fell but stood up and could still smile about it – what a guy!”
Making the best of a bad situation is what takes the negative out of it. Yes, you may feel bad, hurt and embarrassed, but this will only go away if you can begin to feel good about yourself again. You achieve this by asking two questions, namely “What can I learn from this” and “How do I prevent this from happening again.” Once you have done this, take back your self-respect, decide to put the matter behind you (get closure) and move on with life. And where something happens that makes you think about the incident, remind yourself of your decision to put it behind you and then stick with this decision.
Other things you can do to change setbacks into victories:
- Stay calm (and walk away, don’t run away).
- Think of how bad it could have been.
- Count all the things that are still going well in your life.
- Know that it is okay to cry and get the emotions out of your system.
- Vent what you feel by talking with someone you trust about what happened.
- When people laugh about it, take it with a smile or try to laugh about it with them (if you can).
- Remind yourself that everybody makes mistakes.
- Forgive yourself.
- Don’t dwell on it, meaning think it through, vent your frustrations, get enough sleep and then put it behind you tomorrow morning.
- Apologise, if necessary.
- Fix what needs to be fixed.
- Remind yourself that what happened does not define who you are.
- Don’t be shy to ask for help or support.
- Don’t try to be / become perfect because the more you try to be perfect, the more you will fail because it is impossible to achieve perfection.
- Find out why it happened because knowing the reason makes it easier to figure out how to ensure it does not happen again.
- Ignore the reaction and opinions of others because if they did not respect you enough to help you or at least not to laugh at you, why must you respect or listen to what they think or have to say.
Useful quotes:
- “It's not how you begin something that matters, but how you end it.”
- "When in doubt, just take the next step." (Author unknown)
- "Discipline is just choosing between what you want NOW and what you want MOST." (Author unknown)
- "It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer" - Einstein
