Bouncing Back by Cindy Stradling CSP, CPC

Setbacks are inevitable. Whether in your personal life or your business dealings, there will be bumps in the road that test your commitment. It’s important to realize that everybody falls down and that it’s not the fall that defines you, but rather how you pick yourself back up. Here are some tips to help you find your resilience and move forward.

•  Evaluate what went wrong. Once you see the problem clearly, you can determine whether you should have done something differently. If that’s the case, then you know better how to face the situation if it comes up again. On the other hand, you may determine that there’s nothing you could have done to avoid the problem. That knowledge should help you to move forward, chalking the problem up to something you couldn’t control.
•  Go back to your original plan. Whenever you suffer a setback, it’s important to return to your original plans for success. Have you veered from your original plan? Did that create a problem, or do you need to reevaluate how to reach your goals? Sometimes we have a setback because we lost focus on the tasks most critical to our success.
•  Reestablish your commitment. One of the best ways to get back up and dust yourself off after a bump in the road is to remember why you started this journey in the first place. Envision yourself at the finish line, having met all the goals you set out to accomplish with this business.
•  Make adjustments. Learn from the mistakes that caused the setback and make changes to accommodate. Mistakes are not wasted if you learn from them. However, if you fail to make adjustments to your activities, you’re doomed to make the same mistakes again.

Resilience is critical to accomplishing any major goal. There will be plenty of times when you must recover from a setback. Having a strong commitment to your goals and the willingness to reevaluate your plans as things change, will help you to move forward, making changes as needed. Every setback you overcome will make your success all the sweeter once you reach your goals.