How to recover from a setback the right way

Tuesday August 22, 2017 , 3 min Read

Have you ever wondered why the word “setback” is so close to “sit back” in sound? One can even say they are the same thing – or at least subsequent occurrences, where ideally a setback is followed by a sit back. Simply put, a “sit back” is the time one takes off after a setback in order to judge and assess the causes and factors that lead to failure. It’s the time you give your mind to break free from trappings, breathe free, and come to objective and knowledge-based judgment.

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The picture that will thus arise will not only help you deal with forthcoming setbacks, but prevent them from taking place altogether. While each person will have their own distinct ways to negotiate through their mental labyrinth in order to arrive at a clear conclusion, the following three ways can serve as universal landmarks for all.

Don’t be in denial

Thousands of years of Darwinian evolution have made most of humanity go deeper in denial of their true self. Not only do we not know ourselves, we choose to deny anything and everything that doesn’t fit into an ‘accepted sense of self’ and everything that constitutes it. Sure enough, failure is a part of being human. Not in the sense of failing in exams or business, but in our failure to deal with failure.

When you deny failure, you send it to the abyss of your subconscious. Here it does not sit quietly as you hoped it would, but expresses itself by causing internal damage to your ways of thought, behaviour and sense of self. So if you think that denying failure is the way to deal with it, you must re-evaluate your decision. Denial is a small roadblock which, when entertained, can turn into a large mountain, denying you peace of mind and happiness.

Be aware of what ‘really’ caused the mishap

Many people live their lives in utter confusion when they really don’t have to. Very often, their confusion is caused by their unwillingness to spend time and effort on understanding what caused a problem in the first place. This dire refusal to unearth the cause comes in the way of their relationships (with themselves and others), success, and happiness.

If you have suffered a mishap, it’s not because it had to occur, but because it was made to occur, either due to carelessness or ignorance. Your duty now is to uncover the point that was ignored, or the aspect of business that you were careless about. Once you have unveiled the true cause of the mishap, you’ll engrave it on your mind and memory, and thus prevent yourself from being careless and ignorant in your future dealings.

Share your experience

When you share your experience, you give the world the gift of benefiting from your experience. This can help people gain more control over themselves and the way they conduct themselves as representatives of a business and in life. However, if you withhold from sharing what you have learned from your setbacks, you’ll deny the uninitiated what was once denied to you (by yourself or others) – the power of sharing the truth.

So sit back, and use your mind and your heart to figure out the whys and whats that caused you to lose a client, a friend, or a loved one. Soon, you’ll even be thanking providence for putting you in the way of a setback.