The 4 Step Journey After a Setback: Step 2 = Accept
Matt Anderson
The highest level of referral strategy for financial service professionals - and equally proven ways to get out of your own way so that you achieve what you want!
This is the SECOND of four steps to develop a plan for when you have ‘lifequakes’ (family death, injury, divorce, major challenge), feel beaten or badly deflated. Last year I was thrilled to create a 7-step process to 10X your potential – and I use it with all my clients - it’s powerful. But I can personally attest that a big setback can throw you off that course completely, so you want a plan for setbacks just like you need an insurance policy, will, or retirement plan.
This is The 4 Step Journey After a Setback and, no, it’s not easy. Steps 1 and 2 are about HEALING and Steps 3 and 4 are about making a COMEBACK.
1.????Stop and Grieve
2.????Accept
3.????Experiment
4.????New Meaning
STEP TWO: Accept
a)???????Accept what is. This might be the hardest part. Try not to resist or deny ‘reality’. The longer you do, the longer it will take you to progress again.
The setback that happened to you is the stinker to end all stinkers: your horrible outcome was horrible. It still is.
Part of me still wants to cry because I know how hard I worked on my second book. I suppose it’s like being the runner up in a big competition. Studies show that bronze medal winners are much happier than silver medal winners because the silver medal winners wonder what else they could have done to win gold while the bronze winner is just happy to be on the award podium.
But at some point, the tantrums serve no purpose. There comes a time when you need to stop shooting up the poison into your veins and let it go.
It’s also extremely important to understand that while what happened to you does influence you, it does not have to determine your future - otherwise every single person on the planet who has a similar setback (e.g., one of their children dies or their marriage ends) would go on to have the exact same outcomes.
But they don’t, do they?
Not everyone responds the same way. People who lose their partners, get divorced or lose their ability to walk do not all nosedive for the rest of their lives. Those labelled as ‘resilient’ go on to do astonishing things.
Mo Gawdat lost his 21-year-old son to a preventable surgical error. He could have sued. He could have raged. He could have ruined other lives and lived the rest of his life embittered and steaming. No one would blame him. Instead, he committed his life to making a billion people happy and started by writing the outstanding Solve for Happy.
Try to dwell on the people who have exceptional responses to hard times – the ones who transform their lives from circumstances where the social convention is often to be lost or angry.?
In his book, Life is in the Transitions, Bruce Feiler recommends that you turn inward and assume responsibility for making it better. Those he met had success doing the following:
*Imagine situations worse than yours to help you accept what is (“at least I’m not…”).
*See the positive: one interviewee in his book who had imposter syndrome at getting a better-than-expected CEO position said: “It drove me to work harder and learn more than anyone else.”
*Get to work – dive right in to avoid letting self-doubt build up.
*Show yourself some empathy: some negative emotions can lead to feeling unworthy of love, success etc. The solution to shame is empathy.
b)??????Become acutely aware of your environment and how it makes you feel - does it elevate your mood or not?
It’s extremely important to notice how you feel about where you are spending your time. Bars and fast-food restaurants are far more likely to have a low energy to them than gyms or coffee shops. If home doesn’t always feel good, go somewhere that does. Go for a walk - being in nature is usually very helpful.?
c)???????Let go of some old ways of thinking and old ways of doing things. Shed some of that skin.?
d)??????Research your options. If you’ve been diagnosed with a serious illness or new health condition, learn more about it and how to be proactive about it now.
e)???????Combat feeling alone by talking to plenty of people.
In The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm, the brilliant 20th century psychologist who escaped from Nazi Germany and taught at Columbia and Yale, ?writes that “The deepest need of man is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness.”
After my last setback, I felt tormented by this feeling of isolation. Part of me was embarrassed by how I felt; part of me felt humiliation (disappointing book sales) and shame (borrowing a lot of money for an app that flopped) about what happened.
Part of me wanted to hide my challenges from my wife and children. I didn’t want to burden them with my struggle. (I’m supposed to be the ‘rock’ at home).
And part of me didn’t want most of my professional contacts to know I was not in a good place – after all, it’s hardly a magnet for business to say: “I’m having a rocky patch. How about you hire ME to guide you forward?!”
It’s very easy to feel very alone. It also seems to be a trick of the human brain to erroneously assume that no one else can understand what you are going through. We are so self-consumed that it doesn't occur to us to remember that others have had their own setbacks, family deaths and challenges – many of which they have likely not shared for all the same fears you had that leave you feeling isolated.
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If our deepest need even during the best of times is to overcome feeling separate from everyone and everything, you need to dig very deep to open up to others after your setback. Yet you really need a support team and people to lean on and empathize with you and you probably aren’t going to feel like bothering.
What I found when I did start to reach out and share some of my story (it took me a while – and look, you don’t have to open up entirely to everyone), was that it helped A LOT. It started to become a human story and not quite so acutely my personal agony. I couldn’t change the facts, but it helped my emotions start to dilute. I began to notice that what was my ‘whole’ story at the time had pieces missing. I’d overlooked or not considered certain things along the way. It allowed me to reflect on ways the book could be improved. That there were other approaches I could still take if I wanted.
The more I talked to people, the more it became clear that everyone has had their own significant setbacks – even if the other person didn't tell me about theirs. I could tell by the way they listened that their brain was reflecting on a struggle they had had. Maybe their setback was very different, but the emotions, challenges and journey were very similar.
Talking brings you back into the human family and helps you accept your present.
Remember: “The deepest need of man is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness.”
f)?????????Rebalance your expectations - often
The expectations I had for my second book were not met partly because I wasn’t clear about what they were beforehand! I thoughtlessly assumed that I’d have a similar experience to my first book, and I mistakenly assumed that people who knew me would leap out of the ‘audience’ of my network saying ‘where has this content been all my life?’ It was that erroneous Field of Dreams idea that ‘if you build it, they will come.’ Field of Fantasies! I believed it had value, but never validated that with anyone else.
In Solve for Happy, Mo Gawdat explains that “you feel happy when life behaves the way you want it to.” This certainly explains my deep dismay because my expectations were not met. His Happiness Equation is this:
Happiness is greater than or equal to
Your perception of the events of your life
Minus Your Expectations of how life should behave
In other words, if my perception was this:
Regardless of the outcomes of my book (how many copies I sell)…
I am a champ because I spent years creating a high-quality book that goes far deeper than most about getting out of your own way AND that has received a lot of critical acclaim from several New York Times bestselling authors AND plenty of leaders in business who have truly known me for many years…
I could have avoided a setback entirely! Easier said than done, but it is one solution.
g)????????Gratitude practice: Do your best to be grateful for what you do have. At least ask yourself: what could I be grateful for? This didn’t console me much during my grief period (step one), but once the worst sting went away, I became less emotionally reactive and open to noticing what I could be thankful for. If we all put our problems in a big global pile, most of us would still choose to walk away with ours.?
h)???????Reverse the Fear Spiral
“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.”
?- Daniel Kahneman
All of us have worried too much and experienced fear spirals more times than we’d care to mention. We’ve all had setbacks. What you and I need are strategies to catch worries and fears and redirect them back towards an empowered track that gets you taking positive action. You want a better plan next time to pull this weed fast.
Cognitively it can be helpful to remind yourself what Psychologist Daniel Kahneman has found that when we think about something a lot, we unintentionally inflate it out of proportion and lose much of our perspective – hence, a “focusing illusion.” That’s why you sleep on it.
i)??????????Redefine Success for where you are now
As you start to accept your setback, what can you do to halt the spiral and shift your thoughts from worry to something empowering? I found it very helpful to define ‘success for the short term’. It helped manage my expectations much better.
This is what I came up with as a guide to get back on track. Come up with your own.
How do find a little peace about your setback? There is no simple step to accepting a bitter pill, but at least the above ideas give you several tools in your toolkit to work with. They can all help and all help you feel less alone.
Stay tuned for Step Three next week. If you think this was a worthwhile read, can you please forward it someone – anyone – who might find this helpful? At some point they are going to need it.
To the Japanese proverb: “Fall down seven times, get up eight.”
Matt
Copyright Matt Anderson, 2024
SENIOR MORTGAGE BANKER at Wintrust Mortgage
8 个月Thanks for sharing, Matt! Inspiring guidance.