Many times, in our career that may span 30 or 40 years, things will go belly up or become problematic.
You might find yourself disappointing the people who hired you, because you haven't delivered an expected result. Or you might rub someone off the wrong way in a meeting.
More seriously, your actions or inaction may have cost your company or your client losses.
When faced with your own mistakes, trials, and setbacks, it is easy to get caught up in the negativity. Often, fear debilitates you and you tend to stop trying. This allows a problem to get the best of you. At best, you might create a "stop-gap" solution that will not be a lasting solution.
Whatever the situation, it's important to deal with setbacks in as constructive a way as possible. Setbacks, while difficult in the short-term, provide opportunities for long-term learning and growth.
The popular self-help guru Tony Robbins even says "…every problem is a gift, without problems, we would not grow." Asking ourselves how is this problem important for my growth, is not merely the idea that what does not kill us makes us stronger, but that we can actually use the problems that arise as opportunities.
The first mindset we need to cultivate is to with our approach to a problem. If we remind ourselves constantly and consistently that we can not only survive them, but in fact, there opportunities to thrive through our problems, we simply get better and more apt at dealing with setbacks.
I am not suggesting we go searching for problems, but when they come, our thought process needs to be calibrated. Instead of panicking, which never leads to a good outcome, nurturing a mentality that seeks to extrapolate the opportunity in any given issue, actively helps you solve them.
For example, at work, how can a poor performance review that you receive, ever be seen as a good problem to have? With the right outlook, instead of wallowing in your seeming failure, you will choose to look inwards for improvement.
When negative feedback is given to you, you now have a very specific list of skills to focus on. And, when you receive any bad performance reviews from your bosses, the onus is also on them to support you in honing those skills they want from. This creates a strong path to personal growth.
This becomes the most important step; learning to view a problem from a positive angle.
Next, understand that setbacks can be painful. But, be skilled at managing your emotions. The only way to react to something that thwarts you, is to acknowledge that disappointment.
Do not waste your energy on trying to ignore the feeling. it's critical to allow ourselves to feel when things go wrong. Explicit displays of emotion are never encouraged in a professional setting because we all know of the impact our emotions, and behaviour has on our colleagues.
However, it is better for our own mental wellbeing if give ourselves permission to feel disappointment or anger following a setback. If we try to hide our emotions, and pretend that we are not affected, subconsciously, it eats into us. Once we do this, we can then consciously focus on the problem, and figure out why the setback occurred in the first place.
This leads you to the reflection or thinking stage. If you don't "think," you will fall into a negative spiral when things do not work out.
It is vital to move from just being disappointed to a reflective state of mind. When you think deeply about your setback, it affords insights on how to deal with it constructively. Your feelings of disappointment with yourself are an immediate surface-level reaction to a problem.
Reflection helps you process a setback in a rational way.
But in today's distracting world, it can be quite hard. Reflection requires us to intentionally push 'pause', put away our devices, and engage with the feelings of disappointment that follow a setback. Whatever your personal process from reflection is, the aim is to objectively assess what happened; what your role was in the setback was; and how you can glean something positive from the experience.
As soon as you work this out, then you must action and make reparations.
To help you bounce back from any setback, perhaps remember the power of courage. One the most respected statesmen Nelson Mandela said that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.
Having understood the learning from a problem, you need to act for a way forward for yourself. Reparative action is the important final step. After accepting your disappointment, reflecting, and repairing, we can use the negative experience of a setback to better understand ourselves and grow.
In your career, this ability and wherewithal to survive disappointment and bounce back, is critical.
*The writer is managing consultant and executive leadership coach at EQTD Consulting. He is also the author ot the national bestseller 'So, You Want To Get Promoted?'