Hey Guys- Have been hearing questions from a lot of you regarding regarding dealing with set-backs or handling difficult situations. It reminded me of a conversation I had with my friend Ken Coleman a while back. A portion of it is below... Ken Coleman: Advising a bitter friend to “just let it go” is easy, but moving past one’s pain, anger, and failures can be challenging. How can we properly respond to setbacks and pursue a healthy and confident future? Dr. Henry Cloud: You know it actually has a lot to do with how the brain works and how character is constructed. Some people process failures and setbacks and losses well and some people don’t. One thing that is common among those who don’t deal well with these things is that they personalize the failure. They don’t see it as just one event, but instead, as having meaning about them as a person, i.e. they are not “good enough.” They also generalize from that one event to their whole life or their whole business or the whole industry or everything that they do as being bad. And then they add a time dimension to it, thinking they will always be in this bad place and it starts to cloud their view of the future. And when you see failures or setbacks this way, it makes a huge difference. People who handle these situations well tend to not personalize it. If a Tiger Woods hits a shot out of bounds, he doesn’t think he’s a crummy golfer. If Peyton Manning throws an interception, he doesn’t think he is a loser. Instead, they wonder what went wrong with that shot or what went wrong with that play, or what do I need to adjust in my in my swing? They actually use failures as a feedback clue to coach them and train them as opposed to letting those events define who they are. In fact, the highest performers are not attached to results at all. They are separate from any one outcome. So one outcome doesn’t define them. They treat it more objectively. Secondly, we often don’t understand that the voices in our heads and our self-evaluations have been internalized from outside voices. What really strong performers do to overcome setbacks is more than just “forgiving themselves.” They usually have some key relationships with their coaches, team members, mentors, buddy or whatever that help them to let go of failures and setbacks. Therefore, they interpret failures differently because of these relationships. Because they are forgiven and accepted, they are encouraged to learn from it and they find out it doesn’t have to affect the future. They internalize that encouragement from the outside, and it becomes a part of their own thinking over time. Which is why it’s really important to create supportive learning teams around ourselves as opposed to firing squads. Thirdly, one of the most important things is how you see your life’s narrative. If the way you interpret any event is part of a bigger picture, a longer story that understands that life will have wins and losses, but that overall it is headed in a good direction, no one setback will do you in. You know that every movie has some scenes that are bad, but it turns around by the end. You know that in a lifetime of business, markets go down, economies crash, you lose some customers, but that is just part of it. Or in a marriage, there will be some conflicts and tough moments, but the overall love story is a good one. You realize that negative chapters can still get you to a good ending in the larger narrative, so you keep living the story. That does incredible things in the functioning of the brain. It will determine whether you go into fight or flight mode in a tough season, or instead are able to engage judgment and thinking and higher reasoning capacities so you successfully work through the obstacles. Therefore, somebody’s narrative really organizes the software of how they work through this stuff and achieve well after it’s over. Hope that brings you a bit of clarity. Let us know what else youre struggling with.. We love hearing from you guys! Cheers, Henry
Posted on: Thu, 12 Jun 2014 14:39:37 +0000
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