Do You Beat Yourself Up When You Suffer From a Setback? ~ To Fail Is An Option

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Do You Beat Yourself Up When You Suffer From a Setback?

11:24 PM KD 1 comment

By Reza Ali

Have you suffered from a setback lately? Is it still haunting you? Do you ever wonder why setbacks are sometimes so painful? We are creatures of success. It's built within us. It's comes naturally to us. Our brain is wired in such a way that if we set a clear (and I mean crystal clear) goal, our brain will do whatever it takes to achieve that goal for us. That being the case, Why is it that we sometimes suffer a setback? Well. Why we fail and suffer a setback is a different conversation between us. What I'd like to write about today is what to do (and what not to do) when we suffer setbacks in our life.

Let me be brutally honest with you.When we suffer setbacks, the most immediate feeling that we feel is anger. This anger has it roots in the fact that we are creatures of success. When we perceive ourselves as failing because of a setback, we are in effect going against our nature to be successful. After all, I hope you would agree that it is not in our nature to fail. It is in our nature to succeed. When we go against our nature to succeed, our anger arises. Anger in itself is not something bad or something to fear. There is such a thing as constructive anger as it increases our adrenaline and pushes us harder and further (if you know how to use anger to your advantage). Anger becomes destructive when we don't know how to manage it. One thing I've learned about managing anger is that we have to channel it somewhere. When we don't consciously channel it constructively, our anger will find its own channel (and it isn't pretty). The most immediate and normal way our anger channels itself is to direct it towards ourselves and we do that by self blame. We start to think that we are hopeless at things and if it happens enough times, we begin to consider ourselves as losers and failures. We begin to think that we are the ones that caused the setback.

One of the most destructive consequences of our anger (at ourselves) is to beat ourselves up. When we are angry is to beat ourselves up. I used to beat myself up (literally) all the time. Sometimes my anger at myself can be so severe that I would beat my head against the wall or even use my own fist.If we don't beat ourselves up another channel that our anger finds is to direct it against someone else and we could end up beating them up (metaphorically of course although it's been known to happen literally too). Most often this poor soul that bears the brunt of our anger is someone close to us. Consider your loved ones and ask yourself, have they been the channel for my anger when I suffer a setback. It hurts when we realized they have been. So now is the time to start learning how not to do that.

Now, I don't have to tell you that beating ourselves up is not a strategy that leads to success. There is no growth in the act. There is no learning in the act and most likely it will happen over and over again. I've discovered a lot of ways to handle things when we suffer a setback and one of the ways I will share here is to find a channel for your anger and one of the easiest way to channel anger is to express it.

Expressing it can sometimes be made just by saying to someone 'I am angry at what just happened'. I find that even those simple words can go a long way towards channeling my anger constructively. Other ways include writing it down, or even saying it out loud to myself. Whatever you choose to do it, the goal here is to express and acknowledge that you are angry. Many people judge anger to be a bad thing. It's only when I stop viewing anger as a 'bad' emotion that I was able to express it. Just accept that you are feeling certain emotions and don't judge the emotions as good or bad. Emotions are neither good or bad. They are just something you experience.

When you begin to channel your anger constructively, you will start feeling calmer. And you will stop beating yourself (or others) up.

Setbacks are an important aspect of growth and success. Without setbacks, we don't truly know how far we can go. The most successful people in the world are successful not because they learned how to avoid setbacks. Instead they learn how to recover from it. It's a skill that you can definitely master.

So channel your anger properly and stop beating yourself up. When you do, setbacks becomes a learning experiences and will be the cause of many learning as well as much of your growth.There's going to be one beautiful day when you will recognize that the setbacks were probably the best thing that happened to you.

Want more? Go to www.rezaali.net for more.

2011 Reza Ali. All Rights Reserved.

Reza Ali is a writer, speaker, seminar leader and coach who resides in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. Through his workshops, articles, seminars, speeches and coaching programme Reza shares his take on change and how we can use change to achieve anything we want in life.

To learn more and get other content of value, please visit his website at http://www.rezaali.net.

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