Focus on the Real Problem

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The first step in getting over your setback is to regain your focus. Get out of that setback mentality. Tune back into the Anything Is Possible Network and think about where you want to go and why you want to get there. Remember what you were aiming for and why. Look at what happened, accept it, and evaluate it. Don’t pass sentence on yoursel£ Pass sentence on what happened. Figure out what you could have done better or how you could have avoided the problem.

DinerMaybe you needed to learn something more about your goal or about the company or the people around you. Maybe you needed to talk to someone else, to find a mentor who can help you. Ask him or her if your problem has ever happened to anyone else, and if so, how that person fixed it. Maybe it was just bad luck or bad timing. If so, vow that you will keep trying until you have good luck or until you make your luck good. You’ll keep trying until the timing is good or until your timing is good.

Be honest with yourself, or ask others to be honest with you. Nobody gets it right the first time or even the second time. No, it’s not fair. But it’s life-learning.

The second arrow in your quiver is our old friend, imagination. Take some time to get your feet back under you and feel the excitement of your dream. One thing that failure does is to teach you new ways to use your imagination. When you were setting goals for yourself, preparing yourself for success, you took the time to envision what it would be like when you succeeded. You imagined what it would look like, what it would feel like, what it would taste like. Now you have to do the same thing with opposition. Facing opposition, expecting opposition, and dealing with opposition are key steps to achieving success. You have to replace your setback mentality with a step-back mentality.

When you’ve experienced a setback, you have been given a new ingredient for your success. Once you change what went wrong, once you adjust either your behavior or your attitude, then you’ve firmed up the ground you stand on.

When things were going right, you didn’t want to think about what it would feel like if they went left. You didn’t want to get back to that place where things weren’t going your way. But one of the things to learn on our path to success is never to avoid thinking about the hard times, about failure, about making mistakes, about being alone. Psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers says, “The person interested in success has to learn to view failure as a healthy, inevitable part of the process of getting to the top.” An inevitable part. Readjust your vision of the fut~re to include failure. Just don’t let your subconscious hear that. Say to yourself, “Life will teach me lessons, sometimes in disguise. It’s up to me to discover their real shape.” It takes courage to face that fact, but once you do, you’ll be better off.

Next, take another helping of persistence. Did you imagine that everything would go your way the first time? Were you reading the Cliff’s Notes version of your life? Thomas Edison said that he tried more than a thousand different experiments before he made the lightbulb work. But he didn’t describe them as a thousand failures-he said simply, “I took a thousand steps.” If Edison had stopped after 999 experiments and just given up, he wouldn’t have changed the world.

You will make mistakes as you’re trying to accomplish your goal. You’ll slip a Twinkie into your diet or sneak a cigarette. You’ll make a proposal that is dismissed with a sneer. But as long as you learn from whatever happens, you’ve taken a step forward. You might have to learn 999 new things to reach your goal, the way Edison did, but each new idea, each new approach brought him one step closer to his goal. The important thing is not to stop. I couldn’t get into the Peace Corps, but I didn’t stop there. I investigated and navigated until I found the place I needed to be.

CHALLENGE: Make a plan to refocus today. Think about where you want to be. Write down these three words and put them somewhere you will see them all day…FOCUS, IMAGINE, PERSISTENCE.

 

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Left to Right

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Many of you have heard me speak about being on the Left. Left, according to the dictionary, means “to abandon or forsake, to remove oneself from participating in.” Everybody wants to be right, to get it right. It’s a natural desire, but not always the best thing for you. The fact is, you’re going to spend some time on the other side, on the left. It can be painful, it can be lonely, it can be devastating.
Tim Allen knows what it feels like, and I can relate. When he was eleven years old, his father was killed by a drunk driver. Everything changed for him. As he describes it, “One day, a part of your emotional connective tissue is there, the next it’s not and you have this black gaping hole. If you don’t rake it over and plant something else, it eventually fills up with a kind of mud.” That’s a good description of being on the left-and how bad it can be. “I didn’t have any idea what to do with the fact that the world is a very cruel place.”

Maybe it’s not an accident that Tim Allen also studied philosophy when he went to college and comparative religion after that. But he also began drinking and doing drugs, trying to medicate the pain that was in his soul. It got so bad that he wound up in jail and in AA. That was where he began to turn a corner. “There was a moment when I felt a direct connection with that which brought me here. Through feeling that connection-that there’s a purpose to this whole thing-I can say, ‘It’s going to be all right.’ ”

It’s funny, isn’t it? Two Tims who were hit with the same punch but went very different ways with it-and then came back to a similar place. Because it is going to be all right, with that connection to the Spirit that moves us all.

Tim Allen spent a long season on the left, but he also became a hugely successful and highly admired actor and comedian. Is there a connection there? I believe there is. Some of you are probably thinking that you’re glad you haven’t been thrown to the left. Whew, you’re thinking,

I’ve had some bad times, but nothing ever like that! I don’t need that kind of grief! But you’re looking at it with your eyes, from your point of view. I think if you look at it with a God’s-eye point of view, it might look a little different.

I like to say it like this, sometimes you have to get Left to Get Right. Sometimes in life, we experience pain and frustration on our way to living the life we were destined to live.

CHALLENGE: What can I learn from the Left? Is my Right helping others move through their Left?

 

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Believing in Yourself

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There’s a huge difference between narcissism and self-confidence. Narcissism is a psychological condition characterized by self-preoccupation, lack of empathy, and unconscious deficits in self-esteem. Self-confidence is defined as freedom from doubt; belief in yourself and your abilities.

How you handle disappointments and mistakes/failures will depend on your level of self-esteem. If you feel you are capable of assessing your own abilities and improvements, then you will be empowered to “bounce back” from your “setbacks”.

Understanding and acknowledging your unique God-given purpose in life will not only give you direction, but will give you a whole and pure self-confidence. It’s empowering. Self-confidence comes from the ability to keep trying, keep learning and keep caring despite your circumstances.

“Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.” Malcolm S. Forbes

In the Bible, we read about a young boy named Joseph. He was the eleventh of twelfth sons born of Jacob and Rachel. When he was seventeen, he had a two dreams that would set the course for an adventurous and ultimately powerful destiny. Throughout his journey, he was sold into slavery, accused of trying to seduce his master’s wife, and left in prison. His belief in what God showed him and his self-confidence, firmly grounded in God led him to his highly coveted position of Vizier, placed in charge over “all the land of Egypt” by the Pharoah. He later helped, not only the entire land of Egypt to sustain itself throughout a famine, but was able to sustain his family and later open doors for his people.

Our dreams, our purpose, our destiny is not just for us to live a better life. It is set in place for us to make life better for those around us as well. It is interesting that when Jesus is asked what the most important commandment is, he states that we must love God and love our neighbors as ourself. Understanding that loving God, loving others and loving ourself are all extremely important and work together in unison. You can’t love God without loving yourself. You can’t love others without loving yourself. Healthy self-confidence is utterly integral to the success of not only seeing your dreams come true, but to finding fulfillment and strength throughout your spiritual journey.

CHALLENGE: Whether you take a formal Emotional Intelligence test or simply take some time to reflect on your strengths, it is important that we are honest about who we are and how we interact with our world. Write down 10 things you are amazing at. Think about when you noticed you were great at these things. Focus on what you’re good at and search for ways to use those talents to make life better for those around you.

Dress the part, walk a little faster, sit up straight, be thankful, compliment others and speak up.

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Moving Forward

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I wrote back in February about a kid I grew up with in school. His name was Terry, and he was eight years old. A group of us boys were hanging out at lunch one day, and Terry walked into the lunch room. I wished I knew what was going on in Terry’s head because he wet his pants at school that day! I know this is something that may happen with young kids, but Terry was already eight years old. I thought to myself, “Wow… why couldn’t he have worn jeans today?” Terry had on white pants, but that’s not the strangest part of the story… Terry walked right into the lunch room like nothing happened, and kept the same pants on all day! If that were me, I would have run, jumped, or even flown away and looked for safety somewhere.

Twenty years later I was at my school reunion when Terry walked in. It was the same confident walk he had when we were kids. When some of the other guys saw him they said, “Hey there’s Terry… the guy who wets his pants.” It was a little surprising that they said “the guy that wets his pants” as though he did it all the time.

Many times that’s how life is. It tries to label you, or define you in a bad moment. Terry obviously got past that embarrassing day, but apparently not everyone else did. I liked the way he walked into the room like nothing ever happened, because he refused to get stuck in an “almost” life. The word almost means: not quite, nearly, and just about.

move forwardMany become stuck in “almost”, because of bad choices or events that happen in their life. They sit and settle in the middle of the negative event that happened. Kobe Bryant could have done that, but instead he said, “I can’t let what people think or say about me bother me.” Or Britney Spears who said, “I made mistakes, and it is what it is… I still have a lot to learn.” They both got up from their “not so finest” days and decided to do their best to move forward.

You see life is full of moments that aren’t so perfect. All of us have to work through our faults, flaws and failures. I’m sure most of us have had days that we wish we could take back. I know I do.

I was at the gym one time and I saw this big, muscular guy wearing a t-shirt that read: “No Regrets”. That was a nice shirt, with a nice slogan on it, but it’s not always easy to live by those words, but you have to always try and move forward in the best way possible.

I have the privilege of helping many people who are stuck in an almost life—and sometimes, their finest life seems far away– and it’s amazing how many wrong choices can create a bad situation, but one good, healthy choice can turn that all around.

We are finding ourselves at the beginning of Spring 2013 and ready for new growth and fresh air. You may have had some challenging moments, days, weeks, or even months this past year, but you are still standing. I’ve always said it this way, “You may not be what you wanted to be, but thank God you’re not what you used to be.”

I really believe that 2013 can be your finest year ever, so let’s make a choice today, that the best is really yet to come and that we will never let challenging moments stop us from our destiny.

CHALLENGE

Let’s be like Terry… even though he knew that we knew what happened all those years back… he maintained his “swagger” and stood tall. And do you want to know what Terry is doing now? Terry became a very successful doctor and is living his finest life.

Whoever you are and whatever you want, I know that you are capable of achieving it. In fact, I know that you are capable of achieving much more.

 

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The Power of Accepting Responsibility

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Back in the 70s, comedian Flip Wilson portrayed a character named Geraldine. No matter what happened, Geraldine’s answer was always the same, “The devil made me do it!” This was hilarious, because we knew Geraldine do what Geraldine wanted to do, and she caused all her problems. In real-life setbacks, many times the devil didn’t have anything to do with our problems either!

Before my good friend Nacho passed, I had been going to his barber shop to get my hair cut since I was fourteen years old. One day I pulled up in front of his shop and thought I had put my car in park. Actually, I’d put it in reverse. I reached down to get my wallet, and felt something go Bam! I jolted back up in my seat and yelled, “Somebody hit me!” I was mad and got out of my car, looking for the culprit. There was this beat-up, old Celica behind me. Nobody was in it, so I fumed, “This is a hit and run!”

A lady who lived next door to Nacho’s came out of her house and said, “I saw it.” I said, “Well, what did he look like?” She said, “You hit it.” I laughed, “You’re teasing.” She said, “No, you hit it.”

The owner of the Celica was in the barbershop, so I took a deep breath, went into the shop, and said, “I hit your car.” I had to go to my car insurance agent later and say, “I hit the car.” It was hard to admit I was at fault, but in the end I felt like a man and not a mouse. When our setbacks are caused by our own actions, the quicker we admit responsibility and make things right, the quicker we get to our comeback.

When you do the right thing, you become a little taller, straighter, and steadier. Accepting responsibility for your own actions brings stability and consistency to your life. This is what employers are looking for in their employees. It is what a single person is looking for in a mate. And it is what the world around you is waiting to see in someone.

That was my fault. I did it. I said it. I take full responsibility. These statements are hard to utter! They grate against our pride and self-centeredness. They also open the floodgates for God to help us stay steady in and maintain momentum in a very frustrating time, whether it is in a setback or in the process of a comeback.

CHALLENGE: Think about some of the decisions you’ve made in life and claim 100% responsibility for your actions. You may not be 100% to blame, but you can take full responsibility for your response and actions. You can’t truly walk in your comeback without taking responsibility for your setback.

 

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