The 4 Step Journey After a Setback: Part 4 = New Meaning

This is the FOURTH 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 4: CREATE NEW MEANING

a)???When you are ready, write down some lessons learned from this setback so far to build your foundation for the future, e.g., “This too shall pass.” “I’ve been here before and what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.” “My body heals and at its own pace.” “If others have pulled through this and gone onto shine, I can too”. “Less time for ‘a’ means more time for ‘b’.”

b)???Be and do the change

EASE back into your empowering past habits and add new ones that reflect the type of person you now want to be.

If you need to lower your targets to get back in the game, do it now. Just get back on the field – whatever that looks like and even if it scares you greatly. Just turn up.

Ask yourself:?Which activity will build my self-respect/morale quickest?

If you have a peer group, do not compare yourself to any of them. Compare yourself ONLY to your recent past self, your own expectations, and goals. Listen to your inner hero who wants great things from you, not your inner critic!

c)????Don’t get complacent or smug about starting back on track. That’s your ego getting in the way. Don’t fool yourself that your recovery is easy or assured. Prove it to yourself by staying on track week-in and week-out and use the setback as mojo.

d)???Become part of the solution rather than part of the problem

One summer in 1996, about a year after graduating from Yale, Anne Wojcicki was visiting her sister, Susan, in California. Susan had rented out her garage to two men who had just left Stanford to start a new company.

After getting to know them better, Anne started to open up about how bad she thought the healthcare system was in the US and how its primary focus was on making money rather than offering care for all and doing what was right for the consumer.

Many of us have a negative viewpoint about something. Just the other day, a wealth manager client of mine was telling me that his father had raised him to believe that all wealthy people had made their money in a “nefarious way.” My mother used to say the same thing.

Anne’s family had been scarred by an experience that her mother, Esther, had had as a young child. Esther’s 18-month-old brother had found a bottle of aspirin in a medicine cabinet and swallowed the entire bottle. Because the family was poor, they had no money or medical insurance and so were turned away by the first two hospitals they went to. “By the time they found a hospital that would take Esther’s brother, the little boy was in critical condition. The next morning, Esther’s brother was dead,” explains Lowey Bundy Sichol in Idea Makers: 15 Fearless Female Entrepreneurs.

As Anne continued to malign the health care industry yet again, one of the men, Larry Page – who was busy building Google – said: “Anne, you can either be part of the solution or part of the problem. Right now, you’re part of the problem.”

This wake-up call led to her blending the genetics revolution with social networking and crowdsourcing. She founded a company called 23andMe named after the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a normal human cell. The purpose of the business was to provide consumers affordable information about their genetic information and diseases they were at risk for that could help them make more empowered health decisions.

“She also wanted to work together with scientists and pharmaceutical companies,” adds Sichol, “and help them create drugs that work better.” By 2021, rather than still complain about how awful the health care industry was, Anne had empowered over 12 million people. Her problem became her cause. This is how some people respond to a lifequake.?

e)???Find meaning in your new story and make your purpose greater than your fear

Your search for meaning comes from reframing your story and retelling it so it’s one that empowers you and then empowers others. This is a scary and necessary step. Essentially, your story says: THIS PAIN HAPPENED AND I CONVERTED IT INTO POSITIVE FUEL, A CAUSE, and NEW RELATIONSHIPS. You create a new story that ties the transitions together and creates or cements meaning. You start to see the possibilities.?

The most important thing is to make meaning from what has happened to you. Piece your story together so it empowers you. Tell your story and, even though you may not believe it 100% at first, your feelings will follow; you become the narrative. You bring the meaning to it. And you can change your story any time – even when an ‘ending’ seems like a failure!?

Through his three-year journey writing Life is in the Transitions, Jason Feiler learned that stories empower, connect, and inspire us. He says that we don’t tell our stories much and that this contributes to us being a generation of malcontents. “Learning to bring meaning from our life stories may be the most indispensable but least understood skill of our time.” It goes deeper than happiness. The quest for meaning is part of what makes us human.

Any setback or frustration, argues Pema Chodron, “shows us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck.” If we view this only as pain and discomfort, we miss opportunities. Transitions aren’t going away. Face them:

“Don't shield your eyes when the scary part starts; that’s when the heroes are made,” urges Feiler: “The woods are full of people just like us.” The moral of the setback story is to push through and know you’re not alone. Get through the woods and then once you’re out of them, plunge back in again to face down another wolf and dream another dream.

Knowing how to handle life’s inevitable slings and arrows of outrageous fortune means you can bounce back harder and mine more of your gold. You can handle it!

f)????See Yourself as Advantaged: Choose to Believe that Your Whole Life Has Been Happening FOR You Not TO You.

We all have our setbacks, and we all have beliefs/stories/meanings that limit us. What some people do so remarkably is to decide to look at their past pain, change the meaning and ask: ‘how can I use my past pain for my purposes now and see myself as advantaged because of what’s happened to me?’?

It may sound like a crazy idea, but this is precisely what many high achievers do. They decide to look at a situation as life happening FOR them rather than something bad happening TO them. Grant Cardone takes it one step further and argues the most empowered approach is to believe that everything in your life happened BECAUSE OF YOU. I certainly can’t blame anyone else for what happened last year to me with my second book and app.

Some people decide to use their past misfortune as leverage – as a launchpad - rather than succumb any more to feeling like a victim.

Look at what happened to Oprah Winfrey. As a child, her grandmother told her she better learn how to handwash clothes because that was part of her future. A ‘family friend’ raped her and got her pregnant as a teenager. As an adult she over-ate for years as an apology for her incredible success until she realised that she didn't need to do that anymore. These experiences influenced who Oprah became but she did not let them determine her future. You can do the same.

You can come out of a dark place and go on a mission to make the world a better place.

Because of your past difficulties and current challenges, you can relate with others in the same boat: you know what it’s like! Rewrite the meaning.

What was life trying to teach you? To…?

*Be a better parent?

*Be a role model, spokesperson, or advocate?

*Be a leader to others - your clients?

*Give you a clear sense of purpose?

*Be focused on what you can control?

*Be Oprah

*Be YOU!

When you face and rebuttal these demons, it is going to be scary! And this is NORMAL – it’s the same path everyone goes on. My Romanian friend Dani Morosanu, who I wrote about in These 7 Steps 10X Your Sales Potential, transformed her life at 40 after a major life setback. She concluded about the fear that: “I think that’s how it feels to take ownership of your own life.”

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.

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To the Japanese proverb: “Fall down seven times, get up eight.”

Matt

Copyright Matt Anderson, 2024