How to bounce back when you are feeling temporarily defeated
Let’s start with what you need to bounce back from and why you are feeling defeated. First you need to identify where you want to be or where you were when you were happy. Then you need to understand what is causing you to feel defeated.
Our thoughts create our feelings. Understanding that concept will help you greatly with “managing your mind” going forward. What thoughts are you having that have caused negative feelings?
Let’s say, for example, you are unhappy because you are trying to reach a goal and just can’t get there. What are your thoughts about your end goal? Are they future focused, positive and enthusiastic? Or are they driven by scarcity and lack. What I mean by that is that if you are thinking “I want to build a small business and work from home (great, that is a good thing) but I don’t know how to create a website and I have never engaged in marketing, etc.” (this is scarcity thinking). Scarcity thinking comes from a place of lack and not knowing. You may have been all excited when you came up with the idea and had positive thoughts of what you wanted your end result to look like, but then your thoughts went to scarcity, i.e. “I don’t know how or I can’t …….”.
You may have been buffering, which is doing everything and anything rather than what you should be doing to build your business. Or you may be taking passive action rather than massive action. It feels like you are taking action but you are really just exhausting yourself with brain draining actions. Passive action is reading about how to build a website or watching videos on marketing skills, etc.. It is action, yes, but passive. You need to take Massive Action which gets you out there, learning what you don’t know and putting a plan in place.
Let’s go back to your idea using massive action, “I want to build a small business and work from home. I don’t know how to create a website and I have never engaged in marketing but I am signing up for a 6-week course on website creation which starts next week. I also connected with a small marketing company that has a start up course for small business entrepreneurs. I meet with them once a week for a month. I found a “meet up” group that focuses on stay at home business owners. They toss around ideas and share pros and cons. I am super excited to get started and can’t wait to start my new business.”
Now that is what massive action looks like. It comes from a place of future focused, driven thinking.
You start to feel defeated because you let the scarcity thinking take over your actions. It becomes easier to complain and buffer by over eating or over drinking or watching too much TV to buffer your negative feelings. What we need to do is manage our minds and experience the negative feelings in order to grow and be a better version of yourself. Do you think successful people have never failed or never had a tough time getting started? Of course they did and it is with those failures they learned and grew. If you fail the first time then look at what didn’t work, move past that and try again. Each time you start over, you get stronger and more knowledgeable about what not to do and what works. You have to put yourself out there and be fearless. Don’t be afraid to fail because without failure there is no growth.
Think about a baby learning to walk. They take a step and fall. They pull themselves up again, using their arms and take a few more steps but fall again. They are building muscle and strength each time they pull themselves up and soon, they are walking on their own. This is what you need to do, build your strength each time you fall by learning and growing. Be fearless and keep your focus on your end goal.