Everyone will experience setbacks at some point in time. No matter how well you plan, there will always be unexpected problems cropping up. In fact, most of us are not going to achieve success without a few setbacks. They are part of success, so the best thing is to learn how to deal with them.

Here are three tips to help you deal with setbacks when they occur:

Tip #1: Acknowledge your setbacks.

If setbacks occur, trying to bottle them up or ignore is not going to help. If you encounter a setback, whether it is procrastinating a task, eating a food you’re not supposed to eat, or skipping a workout, try to acknowledge it. How do you feel about it? Are you feeling angry with yourself? Guilty? Sad? Disappointed?

Try to acknowledge any feeling associated with the setback and accept it as normal. Do not judge, blame or mock yourself. When we have a setback, negative emotions will crop up and cause us to think negatively of ourselves. The self-defeating thoughts can destroy your self-esteem.

So, the key to dealing with setback is just acknowledge that you made a mistake. Tell yourself that this is normal and you will learn from your mistake. Do not allow the negative emotions to overwhelm you.

Tip #2: Examine your setbacks and learn from them. 

Why did you have a setback? Was there an event that set you up for failure? For example, you procrastinate to start a project because it is too big. If this is the case, then you can try to break down into manageable tasks and list them down according to priority. That way it helps you to focus at one thing at a time, not to be overwhelmed by too many tasks.

This is how you examine and learn from your setbacks. You try to understand what caused the setback, how to work it out and what can you do to avoid them next time. In the previous example, you now know that you will suffer a setback unless you break down a big project into a manageable parts. This is empowering and will help you avoid setback next time. Just recognize that setbacks happen and they don’t have to be negative if you can learn from them.

Tip #3:  Focus on the positive sides. 

We tend to judge ourselves on our failures. It’s as if there is an inner voice that is blaming and telling us off. “you don’t deserve it”, “you’re not worth it”, “you’re stupid”, “you will never get what you want”, etc.. All these are self-defeating thoughts that can be very detrimental.

Therefore, you need to be aware of them and do not allow them to mock and scold you like that. Rather than focusing on the negative emotions, try to focus on the positive sides. Tell yourself that it’s normal to make mistakes, you will learn from your mistakes, move on and do a better job next time.

That’s how you deal with setbacks. Hope you find the tips useful.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 11th, 2008 at 11:04 am and is filed under Self Help. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.