Setback to Reset

Have you ever spent a bit of time thinking about something you want to do? a goal, a project, a lifestyle change - and you want this because you believe it will make your life better. Finally, you’re done thinking and preparing, it’s time to act!

You get the motivation together to show up and do the hard work, but not too long after something happens.

Like a sputtering rocket trying to escape gravity, you start to feel your motivation waning. Your expectations don’t meet reality. The effort you're putting in doesn’t seem to be worth the result you're getting.

The recipe just doesn’t seem to come together. You find that you're not good enough to achieve the ideal you had in your head when you set out on this personal goal.

First, let’s just hold off on the catastrophizing for a moment and realize the incredible victory you've already made for yourself.

You started. You identified something that wasn’t working for yourself and you cobbled together enough motivation to change it. That takes a degree of belief in yourself.

But furthermore, it’s time to redefine what setbacks mean so they don’t lead to a downward spiral that leads you far from where you want to be.

When you encounter a setback you have a choice:
1) View the setback as a sign that the goal you set out to get for yourself is not yours.
2) View the setback as a moment to reset, reassess, regroup, and reenter.

Setbacks are not failures. You may need to give up on pursuing something in your life to free up time and energy for something else that is important. But if, in that moment of feeling defeated you recommit to your goal because it continues to be important to you, a setback need not be such a moment of defeat –

Setbacks are a sign to reset. Move from setback to reset as quickly as you can. This is the sign of a resilient mindset.

* * *

When we look at the necessary components that contribute to success, we seem to find the same elements present themselves:
- Belief that the success is possible
- Practice and learning the skills
- Striving for that success with tenacity; intensity and consistency.
- Reflection and adaptation
- Time is an essential ingredient

Congratulations, if you started. It means you had some modicum of belief that success was possible. When you have a setback DO NOT take that as proof that you were wrong about that belief.

Our minds learn - literally rewire how they work and make circuitry related to the skills and mindset necessary to achieve success - in response to the gap between what it was actually able to do vs. what the ideal goal was. That gap is experienced as a setback.

That gap is also the signal to your brain to be better, don’t let your mind take that as a signal to quit!

Setbacks are essential to the learning process. But if you let your mindset crumble in response to a setback you won’t have the tenacity to push forward.

Tenacity is important because any new skill, habit, and behavior will take time to find its established place in your mind, environment and daily schedule. That tenacity will help pull you through from setback to setback so the learning process can continue.

Learning requires tenacity because learning requires a certain intensity and consistency of behavior - thoughts and actions - to bring about results. If setbacks are signals for growth, intensity and consistency provide the constant signal to the brain to retain and skill-build.

If you let a setback undermine your belief in self, you won’t show up with the intensity and consistency you need to learn and adapt - both in mindset and in real-world mastery of skill.

Reflection in these moments is helpful to get you back on track. Discouragement comes, motivation wanes. Discipline requires us to push through when we feel like quitting. If we feel like quitting because we become discouraged that we suffered a setback, the process of learning will be littered with traps that spiral us off our course.

If instead when we reflect on a setback we recognize that setbacks are the very process of learning and adaptation in action, we will be more resilient to the effects discouragement can bring.

Reflection can allow us to transmute our feelings of disappointment - of not being enough in this moment to achieve success - into a recognition that we have experienced a moment that will create the conditions for us to show up a little bit better on our next attempts. Over time, the intensity and consistency with which we can show up will close the gap and bring success.

Practice and reflection allows us to stay in the game long enough to adapt. We adapt our mindset, we adapt our social circle of support, our strategy, our skills, our perspective, so that the gap tightens and overtime, almost imperceptibly and with the intention to achieve it, success ends up on our doorstep.

But this takes time. Time is the last essential ingredient. Show up with intensity, consistency, and a mindset that is resilient to self-doubt and let that effort overtime bring about the necessary components for you to find your success.

Setbacks are resets! They are not moments to quit - they are requirements for improvement.

* * *

Sometimes after a setback we become discouraged because we lose momentum. Often we pushed hard only to end up at a deadend where things just weren’t coming together.

In these moments it’s helpful to get back to the basic of what makes each of us the strongest most resilient version of who they are:
- Sleep well
- Eat healthy
- Have a clear mind
- Social connection and support
- Physical movement

Often if any of these aspects are off, we will find that we become undermined in our ability to find the resilience to pull through setbacks and use them as springboards for growth. In those moments where I have become obsessed with a project, a goal, or some form of success that simply does not seem to be materializing, releasing that focus from the project becomes a show of agility. If I can gracefully transition to putting that effort back into myself - specifically the aspects of my life that will make me more resilient, creative, and capable - it isn’t long before I am again able to tenaciously pursue my goals; now from a place of feeling reinforced and resilient.

Setbacks are resets.

They are moments of pause and consolidate all that you have achieved; use what you have learned through the process to make the next round more likely to succeed. Setbacks can set you up for the necessary changes that your success will ask of you.

The next time you experience a setback, take a deep breath, allow the change necessary to bring about the skills and adaptations your success will require, focus on the health of your mind, body and spirit by giving attention to each of the five aspects above, reset, and then reassert your intention.

Come to view setbacks as opportunities to grow and overcome what is keeping you from your goal, rather than a sign that you are not capable or worthy of your goal.

Setbacks are proof that learning is taking its course. Setbacks are proof that you believed in growth. Setbacks are progress. Stay patient, determined, focused, strong, flexible, creative, playful, and tenacious. Reset.