How to Overcome a Setback

Let’s talk about setbacks for a minute, shall we?

They happen sometimes. Not all the time, thankfully. Not even most of the time. But they do crop up every now and then. And even though we don't like to talk about them a lot, that doesn't keep them from happening.

➳ We save for months for a three-week-long family adventure overseas and end up with unexpected car trouble or medical expenses that suck the savings account dry.

➳ We change our eating and exercise habits and finally start chipping away at the extra fluff we’ve been carrying around this winter, and then find ourselves on the couch with a bag of Cape Cod salt & vinegar chips after an especially stressful day.

➳ We find something that lights us up and move forward with a new project or business or shake up our whole life to make our big dream happen, and then we run across someone else living her life's purpose and it looks so much better than ours that it makes us rethink everything.

➳ We make so much progress building a deeper relationship with someone we love, and then something they say sets us off and we’re hurt all over again.

➳ We work on growing our confidence, intuition, abundance mindset, or some other personal growth area for months and then get bombarded by a rogue friend or family member spewing negativity our way (or more likely a rogue emotional response to that friend or family member) and have to start again way back at square one.

It happens.

A couple of setbacks happened to me just last week.

First, I listened to an AMAZING new book called Between the Mountain and the Sky: A Mother's Story of Love, Loss, Healing, and Hope by Maggie Doyne and it made me rethink the choices I've made in life and what I'm meant to do on the planet with what's going on all over the world right now. (I'm still thinking and listening to the book again with my teenagers, so I'm sure we'll be chatting more on that later.)

Then, on Friday afternoon, I went out for a short hike on a soggy, wet, slippery trail and, out of nowhere, found myself flat on my back with a re-injured knee, calling my husband to run up and help me get back home. (After three months of nursing that knee back to health, to say I was disappointed would be an understatement.)

That fall made me realize something.

Setbacks happen to us all in all sorts of ways. And when they do, we have a choice ⤵⤵⤵
We can either get back to work or don’t.

I don’t mean to oversimplify it, but doesn’t it eventually come down to that?

We either try again or we don’t.

We can spend time mourning the progress we lost, wondering how we could have prevented the setback, and planning on preventing the next one if at all possible. We can reflect and reset and make adjustments. But inevitably, we have to get back to work — a step that’s much easier if we leave any guilt and shame voices out of it and unleash a bit of mindset power, for sure.

This week, I’ve been getting back to work on my knee, acknowledging that I’m pretty bummed about being back at 30% capacity when I was just at 90% a few days ago, planning how to keep this from happening again if I can, and trying to balance rest with that whole getting back to work thing. I've also been getting to work on my heart and all that's swirling there thanks to Maggie Doyne's book.

I wonder if you’ve experienced a setback in something recently, too.

If it’s something easy to see (like a knee injury), I hope it’s easy to get back to work for you. But if it’s something a little more hidden, a little more of an inside job, like personal growth or family togetherness, I hope this little reminder will help you get over any guilt or shame humps you’ve been facing and get back to work on that, too.

Not the stressful, striving kind of work. The graceful, simply abundant, smooth, easygoing kind.

Now let's do it — let's get back to work on creating, growing, and living the life we've always known we were meant to live.

And, of course, if I can ever help, shoot me a message. I'm here.