However, if we stay “at sea” long enough at some point along the way the weather conditions are going to change for the worse, causing us to veer off course and/or to hit some sort of a barrier. After encountering these challenges in our life our passion, focus, faith, and dedication may wane as we become dejected, disillusioned, despondent, disappointed, discombobulated, and depressed. Perhaps: our financing dries up, a large client no longer needs our services, a vital partner pulls out of a deal, we get fired, a relationship breaks up, another rejection letter arrives, or a prolonged illness hits us.
What separates the “dilettante dabbler” from the “durable doer” is how he/she reacts and responds to the challenge after hitting a psychological or physical barrier “wall” and experiencing The Big Wham. How do you remain dedicated after experiencing a shattered dream, exhausted body, broken heart, and/or disabling injury? How can you pick yourself up off of the ground, regain your balance, dust yourself off, refocus your attention, and once again begin to take a positive and corrective action in the direction of your passionate dream or overwhelming project?
How to Navigate After a Set-Back Here are some suggestions of how to navigate yourself under, over, and around an obstacle that you may have encountered:
First, don’t rely on your feelings or beliefs to pull you through. After experiencing a physcial obstacle or emotional set-back you may not have any positive feelings and beliefs to motivate you. In addition, the pain may be so great that all you want to do is to run away, hide, and/or change your name. Therefore, it is extremely important not to listen to and/or believe your hopeless feelings, faltering faith, or bleak beliefs at such times.
Instead, after encountering a barrier, your most reliable tool to help you to recommit is simply your commitment to your commitment. You gave your word and made an agreement with yourself (and perhaps others) -- and now you are going to honor that contract regardless of your negative feelings, waning faith, and/ or bankrupt beliefs.
This can be accomplished by taking a small yet focused mini-action in the direction of your goal regardless of the emotions you are feeling, the sensations you are experiencing, and/or the limiting conversations that may be occuring inside of your head.
Second, lessen the “meaning-fullness” of your encounter with the obstacle. Just because you veered off course doesn’t make you a stupid, unlovable, or worthless person. It just means that you are a human being who messed up a bit, didn’t prepare well, needed a real good lesson, or was just unlucky.
Third, attempt to create some separation between yourself and the encounter. This stepping back will help you to “de-personalize” the experience and lessen the “significance” of the situation. With a “just the facts approach” (rather than what you believe the facts mean about you), you can lessen the intensity of your shame and self-thrashing. This, in turn, will allow you to be freer to: forgive yourself (and others), see and appreciate the lesson learned, create a viable solution, and begin to take a corrective and focused mini-action in the direction of your dream project or overwhelming task. As Tim Russett’s father, Big Russ, taught him - “You can’t recover a fumble unless you are on the field.”
Fourth, right after you hit the “wall,” you are no longer the same person. The experience, especially if it was an emotional one, will have rearranged your molecular structure as a human being. Trust that the wiser you got the message and need not make the same decision or take the same actions again.
Keep reminding yourself that the actual detour or derailment occurred in the past. Dragging this past and painful emotional experience into the present just messes up your present and future experiences and possibilities.
Conclusion Keep trusting that just because you encountered an interruption, challenge, and/or detour and didn’t arrive at your destination in the allotted time frame, doesn’t necessarily mean that you shouldn’t be traveling down this road, forgiving yourself and others, and taking more corrective mini-actions. It may simply mean that you need more time to refocus your priorities, revitalize your passions, and re-cultivate your curiosity.
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