“Life is what happens to you when you’re making other plans.” Betty Talmadge, American meat broker and cookbook author, is the first one who is credited with this adage. Setbacks happen in business and in life.
By building up your resilience – your bounce-back ability – you will know how to get back up after you have been knocked down. Follow these principles to soar through setbacks and keep your resilience revved up.
Use Your Power of Choice. Begin to look at how resilient you are in everyday occurrences. Do you let traffic, a delayed plane, or a disappointing phone call ruin your whole day, or do you consciously choose to bounce right back? We always have a choice about how we react to what happens.
Build on Past Successes. At first your setback might seem too much to handle. To help yourself bounce back, think about other challenges you have faced in your life and business in the past. Remember how you dealt with them, and how you came through those challenges. Remind yourself of all you have dealt with – and yet you persevered. This will fuel your ability to overcome this setback.
Look for the Lesson. Setbacks serve. They bring with them lessons about you, about your leadership, about your business. When a setback erupts in your path, before dowsing the flames you should first examine its lesson. Learning the lessons that your setbacks deliver is one of the ways you build your resilience.
Caterina Rando, TWIB Magazine Publisher