Bouncing Back from Tough Times with Self-Encouragement
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By Jim Rohn
2008 Nightingale-Conant Corporation
Here is a familiar scenario for all of us; you may even be going
through something like this right now: You have an exciting goal in
mind, you've done your homework, you think you're amply prepared . .
. but things just don't work out. You've probably had times when you
thought you were doing what you were supposed to do, but you were
misinformed. You thought you had it all laid out, but it just didn't
work. You burned the midnight oil day after day after day, but it
didn't seem to help. You couldn't seem to change the end result.
These are the times when you have to be your own best cheerleader.
And there are two ways to keep yourself encouraged.
Number one: Take responsibility for the missed opportunity or the
misrepresentation. Learn from the fact that even though you made the
best presentation possible, your client wanted it a different way.
Be prepared for the letdowns that happen every so often. Know that
this lost opportunity just set you up to take advantage of the next
one. Realize that you can make the necessary alterations next time.
Make the changes that will make the difference. Study your mistakes
and learn from them. Instead of dwelling on the mistakes, simply
acknowledge them and learn from them. Remind yourself that you're
smarter than your bank account leads you to believe.
Encouragement practice number two: Remind yourself that you're bound
to get better. Don't get down on yourself. Don't beat yourself up.
It's the next opportunity that matters, not the last one. The last
one matters only in that you must learn from your mistakes. But the
next one gives you the opportunity to show that you have learned from
your mistakes. You can do it better next time. You just have to
practice. Keep trying until. Until what? Until you've got it down.
If you figured out what went wrong last time, then you know how to
make it right next time. If you figured out what it was in your
presentation that didn't work, don't say that next time. If you
figured out that the reason you didn't close the deal this time was
because you didn't have all the facts and figures in place, have all
the facts and figures in place next time. Don't beat yourself up for
messing up. Pat yourself on the back for figuring it out.
You need to encourage yourself. You need to pump yourself up. You
need to be your own cheerleader. Why? Because you can't wait and
hope that someone else will come along and cheer you up . . . make
you feel better . . tell you that you'll do better next time. You
have to rely on yourself. You have to have faith in yourself and
your ability to figure out what works and what doesn't. You have to
have the inner belief that everything you're doing, you're doing for
a positive outcome in the future. You have to encourage yourself
with future successes.
When you miss an opportunity, are unprepared for an opportunity, or
suffer a setback while realizing your goals, you need to encourage
yourself by immediately getting back into line.
There's an old cowboy saying, "Fall off a horse seven times and
you're a real cowboy." If you fall off a horse, get right back on.
If you fall off track, get right back on. If you fall away from your
disciplines, get right back to them. If you fall out of habit, get
back into the habit. Something goes wrong, do what you can to make it
right.
If you fall off . . . get back on. If you fall off the horse, that
is, the horse of habits or disciplines or progress, get back on. It
may be hard. It may be a bit frightening. But get back on. Keep
your resolve alive and active and well. Cheer yourself on to
victory. You can do it.
Where the Miracle Begins
Sometimes, defeat is the best beginning. Why? Well for one thing,
if you're at the very bottom, there's only one way to go - up. But
more importantly, if you're flat on your back, mentally and
financially, you'll usually become sufficiently disgusted to reach
way deep down inside yourself and pull out miracles. Pull out
talents and pull out abilities and pull out your desires and
determination. When you're flat broke or flat miserable, you'll
eventually become so disgusted that you'll pull out the basic
essentials required to make everything better.
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It's in the face of adversity that things begin to change, that you
begin to change. With enough disgust, desire, and determination to
change your life, you'll start saying, "I've had it. Enough of
this. No more. Never again!
Here's where the miracle begins. "I've had it. Enough. No more.
Never again." These words and these thoughts really rattle the power
of time and fate and circumstances. And these three things, time and
fate and circumstances, all get together and say, "Okay. Okay. We
can see that we have no power here; we're facing some major resolve!
This guy's not going to give up. He's had it. He's done with all
this nonsense. We'd better step aside and let this guy get by!"
Inspiration through disgust.
A lot of people don't change themselves. They wait for change. These
poor unfortunate folks accept their defeats and wallow in their
self-pity. Why? Because they refuse to take control of the
situation. They refuse to take control of their life, their career,
their health, their relationships, their finances. They refuse to
take responsibility and get sufficiently disgusted to change it.
If you are disgusted, if you are in the need of some change, if this
book finds you in the middle of your own personal slump, then I have
some words to offer. Your present failure is a temporary condition.
It is only a temporary condition. You will rebound from failure,
just as surely as you gravitated into failure.
One time, when I was in the midst of a bout of failure, somebody
suggested that I should tell myself, "This too shall pass." I firmly
believe that you're only given as much as you can handle, as much
negativity, as much failure, as much disappointment. This too shall
pass, if you grasp for a new beginning. You need to pull yourself up
and move back into the world with a plan.
As foolish as it might sound, you should be thankful for your current
limitations or failures. They are the building blocks from which to
create greatness. You can go where you want to go. You can do what
you want to do. You can become what you want to become. You can do
it all, starting now, right where you are.
A father talks about his daughter. She's gone through some pretty
tough times, and as he tells it, she's a pretty tough person. He has
a unique way of describing his daughter's situation, though. While
most parents would be frantic, even for their kids who are grown and
gone, this man just smiles and says that his daughter is like a frog
in a jar of cream: She keeps kicking and kicking and kicking, and
pretty soon the milk will turn into a lump of butter and she'll be
able to jump out. That's an interesting illustration of tenacity,
because that's how it really works. You've got to keep trying and
trying and trying. You've got to have enough resolve to do it until.
Some of the most inspiring success stories have started with
failure. Longfellow started in failure. Michelangelo started in
failure. Lincoln started in failure. Rod Serling wrote 40 stories
before he had one that was accepted. Walt Disney was fired by a
newspaper that felt he had no talent. Richard Byrd crashed his plane
on his first solo trips before he became one of the world's greatest
explorers. And the success stories continue.
Be grateful for your adversity. At the same time, make sure that
it's working for your future, not against you. Make your failures
give birth to great opportunity, not prolonged agony. Make your
disgust lead to inspiration, not depression. The world will
willingly sit by and let you wallow in your sorrows . . . until you
die broke and alone. And here's what else the world will do. The
world will step aside and let you by, once you decide that your
present situation is only temporary. The doors will open once you
decide to get back on your feet and make your mark.
You have to care. In your own enlightened self-interest, give a run
at adventure. Keep your eyes firmly set on achievement. Don't
settle for mere existence and self-pity. Make a commitment to
excellence. And remember, it is your challenge, your own personal
challenge, to use all your gifts and skills and talents and knowledge
to survive and succeed.
Increasing Your Resiliency
Resilience is the ability to return to the original form after being
bent, stretched, or compressed. That's the dictionary's definition
of resilience. It's the ability to readily recover from illness, or
depression, or adversity.
In our lives, resilience specifically means being able to withstand
setbacks, broken hearts and broken dreams, financial crisis, loss of
loved ones, loss of enterprise, and loss of health. How would you
ever handle it if you lost everything you had today? What would your
next step be? How long would you be depressed and upset and angry?
What would it take for you to pull yourself up and start all over
again? How resilient are you? Could you handle it? Could you learn
from all of your disappointments and start all over again? What
would it take?
Number one, it would take a lot of self-discipline. It would take a
lot of positive self-talk to muster up the energy to begin again. It
would take a lot of concentration to block out the noise and the
clutter of all the negative voices trying to get through, as well as
the negative voices of others around you. That's a lot! It would take
a lot of discipline to balance the fear and anxiety with the knowing
that, if you did it once, you can do it all over again.
It would also take a lot of self-reliance. Whether your losses had
anything to do with you or not, your future success has everything to
do with you. It would take a lot of self-reliance to avoid blame.
What's happened has happened. You would need to get on with your
life and begin again.
It would take a lot of faith. It would take a lot of faith and trust
in God to move ahead.
If you lost everything tomorrow and you were gathering all the
courage to try again, it would take a lot of self-appreciation. You
need to know in your heart and mind that you have the skills, the
talent, and the strength to do it one more time.
Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity, no matter
how large or how small. You lose a client, one of your biggest
ones. This client accounts for more than 25 percent of your gross
revenues. Losing this client is going to hurt, financially and
emotionally. Losing this client is going to negatively affect things
for a while. The first thing you do is figure out why you lost this
business. What role did you play; in what way are you responsible?
You can't just rant and rave, yelling and screaming at everyone in
the office. Even if it was the wrongdoing of someone else, you can't
act like this, because it's not professional. You'll lose respect.
And respect is hard to regain once you've lost it, whether it's the
respect of those you work with, your trusted colleagues, or your
valuable support people. You have to approach the situation
rationally and figure out how to bounce back from your loss.
You have to evaluate the situation and then start a plan to recapture
the lost business. Consider how you can increase your market share
with other businesses. Maybe you can network with associates to
bring in a similar client or even a better one! You can't sit back
and dwell on what's happened. You've got to get back into the
marketplace and recapture what's been taken from you. Get back at it
and replace what's gone.
Perhaps your loss is a personal loss. Maybe you've recently been
faced with the death of a loved one, a divorce, or the loss of a very
special friendship. If your loss is a deeply personal one, you must
approach the situation a little differently. You must be patient
with yourself and give yourself time to grieve, time to mourn, time
to regroup.
The stages we go through in loss, be it the death of a loved one, the
death of a relationship, or the death of an enterprise, are
beautifully defined in Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' book On Death and
Dying. Whether the death is a literal one or a figurative one, the
stages are the same: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and
acceptance. And only by going through these stages, and reaching
acceptance, can we rebound and begin again.
It's said that children are more resilient than adults. Why? Maybe
it's because they don't evaluate their current situation based on
past experiences. They approach it in a fresh way, a new way. In
their own minds, they deal with loss much better than adults.
Children who grow up in the unfortunate circumstances of poverty or
abuse or neglect and later become successful are known as dandelion
children. If they can succeed and prosper with terrible conditions,
they can grow anywhere. It's important to be more like a dandelion
child. To be able to grow and prosper and succeed, despite our
current conditions. To be able to grow and prosper and succeed
despite our losses. To be resilient.
Cultivating a resilient character turns what others would call
failure into success. A resilient person won't give up. A resilient
person will, in spite of all obstacles and set-backs, keep doing it
until.
In their book The Resilient Self, Steven and Sybil Wolin have studied
resilience and have found seven key characteristics which compose it.
Number one: Resilience requires insight. You need to develop the
ability to ask tough questions of yourself and be honest with your
answers. If you had something to do with your loss, be honest and
responsible for it.
Number two: Resilience is independent. As a resilient person, you
can count on yourself to bounce back into life.
Number three: Although resilience is independent, it's also tied to
others. The more people you are responsible to, the greater your
motivation to begin again. The stronger the reason, the stronger the
action.
Number four: Resilience calls for initiative. You need to develop
the ability to take charge of the situation, to take charge of the
problem. You need to stand up and do whatever is necessary to get
back on course.
Number five: Resilience has an element of creativity. With
resilience, you are able to look at a situation and creatively
determine the best way out. You are enterprising in your approach
toward starting over.
Number six: A resilient person has humor. You may cry until you
start laughing, but a sense of humor is so important when turning
your life around. You've got to take your goals seriously, and
you've got to take yourself seriously. But you've also got to be
able to laugh at yourself and your situation at times. Somebody
says, "You'll look back on this and laugh someday." Well, maybe
today is the day to start.
Number seven: A resilient person has a strong sense of morality.
Whatever you do to get back on your feet, whatever you do to bounce
back into life, make sure it's moral. Make sure that your upcoming
success is at the service of others, not at the expense of others.
Success, if it is yours to keep, must be at the service of others.
The more obstacles you face and overcome, the more times you falter
and get back on track, the more difficulties you struggle with and
conquer, the more resiliency you will naturally develop. There is
nothing that can hold you back, if you are resilient.
Make it a productive and successful week.
Your coaching company,
Eric Jordan - Your Real Estate Coaching Company
Eric Jordan Coaching, LLC
www.ericjordancoaching.com
877-756-4014
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