In life, you’re going to experience obstacles. You can either let these things get you down, or you can bounce back even higher and use the downward momentum to propel you to bigger and better things.
Bouncing back from some obstacles will undoubtedly be easier than others; there will be minor setbacks that feel like few steps back, and there will be major ones that feel like you’ve lost all of the distance you’ve gained. However, regardless of how monumental of a mishap you’ve experienced, there are always ways to pick yourself off, dust yourself off, and continue back down the same path. Here are some ways that you can bounce back after a setback in life.
- Avoid assigning blame.
- Whether it was your fault, your team’s fault, or nobody’s fault, there’s absolutely nothing you can do now to turn back time and change the course of events, so assigning blame is fruitless. If you beat yourself up about it, or hold it against others, you’re hindering your ability to solve the problem and focus on moving beyond it.
- Learn from your mistakes.
- It’s normal to feel the sting that accompanies doing something incorrectly, but it’s important to power through the pain and figure out how you can turn this mistake into a lesson. It’s not easy to open yourself to criticism and ask for feedback from others. However, if you want to learn from the experience you need the input from an objective party who can help you see the improvements that go unnoticed by you. It’s also important to take the constructive criticism as a reflection of your performance and not of yourself; you can’t take advice personally.
- Commit to growing.
- If you use setbacks as a way to bring yourself back to where you were prior to the fall, you’re not utilizing their full potential. Instead of accepting stagnation, commit to bettering yourself on all accounts and improving as a result of the missteps. Look for aspects of your life that you can work on: up your work ethic, hang out with people who inspire you, and look for areas of personal growth.
Setbacks only keep you back if you let them. When something knocks you down in life, the best solution is to get back up and keep fighting.