How to Handle Setbacks
- Nina
- Jan 13, 2017
- 4 min read
Setbacks can be frustrating. You’ve made a decision to strive for a goal, and you’ve worked really hard towards it. Then something happens. A plateau – or even something that sets you back a few steps. Infuriating! It is now mid-January, which is when a lot of people start teetering on their New Year’s Resolutions, so this is a perfect time to talk about setbacks.
One of the biggest ways to disappoint ourselves is to have unrealistic expectations. Do not expect progress to be linear. Do not expect progress to be constant. Progress looks more like a really intense roller coaster, flipped upside down. So many twists and turns, backwards and forwards, around and around. Eventually you end up where you expect, but there is a huge and unexpected adventure in between the start and the finish. At any one point in time, you may look at where you are and not think you could ever make it to the end – you may not even be facing the right direction! But trust your process and adapt if necessary. Do NOT give up. In that moment of frustration, you do not see the whole picture. You do not see how far you’ve come. Trust. Have faith in yourself and your capabilities. It may be hard, sure. But it is not impossible.
Plan for the setbacks. When a setback occurs, think to yourself, “Aha! A Setback! To be expected!” Be excited when setbacks happen. See them as milestones in your progress. Think of them as obstacles strategically placed in your way in order for you to discover your strengths. Setbacks challenge us to get creative and clever, patient and persistent. How we handle a setback is how we really shine.
Sometimes we ask too much of ourselves. Perhaps you expected to quit sugar forever, or exercise every single day. Sometimes we need to PLAN our setbacks in order to control our morale and forward momentum. For example, I quit coffee. I don’t need coffee for the caffeine, but I love having that warm, soothing, delicious, comforting cup of coffee in the morning. I found that how coffee affects me isn’t something I want to experience full-time. So I came up with a plan. I’ve “quit” coffee, but every two weeks, I have a “Coffee Break Day”. On this day, I allow myself to enjoy a delicious cup of coffee. This makes the experience a special treat I can look forward to instead of a mindless daily routine. Instead of deciding I would never have coffee again, and then berating myself on the days I inevitably slip up, I plan the setback. This helps me feel like I am still making forward progress. I am still on track. I don’t feel the guilt or shame involved with “slipping up”. We all know what happens when you feel like you’ve slipped up, right? We decide everything is ruined and we might as well give up. And so our bad habits easily sneak back in.
Let’s say you’ve planned out your “setbacks”, and you still slip up one day. You swore you’d go to the gym 6 days a week, and one day you didn’t. The reason doesn’t matter – work ran late, you were sick, something came up, or maybe you just plain didn’t want to. A huge inner conflict occurs when this happens. Shame, guilt, defensiveness and steadfast decisions and judgments are made. This isn’t necessary! Do not berate yourself for messing up. You are HUMAN. When it comes to habits and goals, it matters what you do most of the time, not what you do rarely. If you went to the gym 6 days a week for 3 weeks and then miss two days, shake it off. Two days does not make a routine. Two days is nothing! Be grateful for the rest you gave yourself, for whatever reason, and then get back to it the next day. That’s what matters. How you handle the setback. How you dust yourself off and start again. What you tell yourself about the setback. How you feel about the setback. Are you putting yourself down, or are you continuing to encourage and motivate yourself? Be gentle with yourself.
If you have the opposite problem, and you are too comfortable with taking time away from your goals, perhaps this isn’t the advice for you! You are coming at this from a different attitude and a different perspective. But if you are like me, and you strive hard, work hard and plan hard, and then something comes up – that’s okay. Don’t let it make you crazy. It happens. It will be okay. You do not need to judge yourself.
Suppose you have a plan and have been doing everything right, and you reach a plateau. Really, a plateau is just another setback. It is an impediment to your progress. That’s okay! Plateaus are to be expected, too. Let’s talk about exercise, for example. You’ve had a great routine that has shown a lot of results, and then suddenly no more progress is made. For days, and then weeks, nothing happens. That’s okay! This just means changes need to be made. This is where you get to learn something new, try something new, graduate to a next level of understanding or meet a new mentor with a new philosophy. A plateau doesn’t mean that’s the end for you. It means you need to change things around and crank it up a notch. But if you’ve gotten to that plateau, you are READY to level up. Do not get discouraged!
Remember, setbacks are what help us grow. They are what allow us to discover and apply our strengths. We get to problem solve and come up with solutions that we can take pride in. After all, what fun would a roller coaster be without the twists and turns?
What setbacks have made you want to give up in the past? Can you see what your next step is to conquer it or plan for it? How do you feel about the setbacks you’ve experienced?
