Hi guys! Welcome to episode 133 of the wildly successful lifestyle podcast! This is one of those episodes you might want to share, you never know who you might help.
I’m talking about Setbacks today because well, We all have them.
Sometimes they are as small as posting something and getting no likes. Sometimes they are major like a divorce or job loss or losing someone you love.
You see the examples of someone that seems to bounce right back and then another person that it just seems to derail them completely.
So what’s the difference?
We will talk about that in a minute. But first.
It was 2018. I was driving downtown for lunch with my sister. She had asked me to meet her. I sort of knew it wasn’t going to be a fun lunch, I’d been given the heads up from my mom. One of our worst fears in life is rejection and fear of losing someone you love. I was going into this lunch kind of knowing both of those things were possible.
I sit down and basically my sister that I love, her kids have been so close to me and Eric but now here I am facing this lunch where she is telling me they will no longer be part of mine and Erica life because we are not part of her religion and she doesn’t want the kids to be around us for fear we will influence them away from the church.
This is a big fear for people in this religion, in fact people have been so distraught from being separated from their family that they have committed suicide. Honestly when I was younger and didn’t have the tools I have now, I had those thoughts too because I was so afraid of losing the people I love but here I am facing it head on. I held my own and told her I felt this was a mistake but she disagreed. It’s been 3 years since that conversation that for my whole life I had dreaded, And I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. Just so you know my sister still has nothing to do with us, but here’s the thing. Has it been hard? Yep. Have there been moments of pain and anger? Yep.
But I was introduced to mindset work as a young adult. Probably around 26 or so. It has been a passion of mine ever since. I have been working so consistently on my mindset the last several years that I’ve realize I get to define my for my life and I choose to be joyful regardless. Now my life isn’t Better because my sister left, it’s better because I’m not relying on something external or someone else to make me happy or feel loved or worthy. And that applies to everything.
I have no choice but to be joyous because I have decided I will create a life that is full of joy and I do. I don’t control other people. If my sister were still in my life I’d be joyous. If she’s not in my life I’m going to be joyous. Because I don’t control anyone other than myself, nor do I want to.
Many people that leave that religion and are ostracized from their families turn to drugs and I even had one friend that ultimately committed suicide. I was just fortunate that I turned to self improvement. I became a self improvement junkie. My life is good. It’s really good. It could have turned out very differently.
These are extreme examples, I know but look. We all have setbacks and how we look at them and the meaning we give it will ultimately decide our life.
A good mindset doesn’t happen overnight. It took me a while to really understand that life is happening for me, not to me. Now any setback I have I know that it is ok and something better is on its way. It took a long time for me to realize that starting my day with meditation, journaling and exercise will actually set the tone for my day. I’ve shared the phone addiction that I recently overcame. I beat that because I started recognizing my frame of mind was not good when I started and ended my day on twitter.
When you are consumed with something whether it’s twitter, the news, the latest Netflix series, do you notice that a lot of your day is filtered through the lens of what is going on? If everything you are paying attention to is negative, then you see things through a negative filter. Likewise if you start your day in a really positive way, you will automatically start seeing things through a positive filter. Imagine having a setback and instead of thinking well that’s par for the course, you say, ok something better is on the way or what good is going to come from this? Can you feel the difference in those two responses? One is going to keep you on the path to a bad day compounding because that’s how it works and the other is going to make you look for what’s good, to know something better is right around the corner. That’s the power of a great mindset. Our setbacks become
And look, I still struggle with feeling inadequate when I hear the big podcasts have millions of downloads, but that’s just because I am comparing myself to people that have been doing this for 9 or10 years. Comparison is one of the quickest ways to have a setback or compound a setback. So recognize when you’re doing that.
You get to define what success looks like. And it is going to look different then success to someone else. But you’re in the game. You’re not in the stands watching…You’re in the game! And consistency is one of the biggest keys to success. You don’t lose unless you quit, Don’t look at failure as a setback. Failure is not losing…it’s learning. Its showing you what didn’t work! That’s a good thing! You’re one step closer to what will work.
And if your setback involves a lost relationship then just know this. What is meant for you is always going to be yours. There’s nothing that will stop it. So if your setback is a breakup, you just work on making yourself the best version of you that’s possible and know if it’s meant to be, it will be. When you do that, you might look back and say “you know what that’s the best thing that ever happened to me because it caused me to grow to the point where I no longer recognize the person that was in that relationship.
My challenge to you this week. Take control of your mindset. Do it now and you will never regret it. I love you guys and I’ll talk to you in a few days.
