Days You Don’t Expect and Why You aren’t a Loser

There are days and then there are days you don’t expect. Good days and bad. One day follows the next and we hope they will get us to where we want to go. A life well lived.

What do you do when they don’t get you there. What happens when the plan doesn’t work? What happens when everything you do falls flat. Follow along and learn why you aren’t a loser.

Days turn to Weeks

Single Days we can handle but some days turn into weeks and weeks into months. What then?

Desperation

It might seem like your life has turned into a vortex sucking you into ‘The Perfect Storm’. Remember that movie? The perfect storm was not only a major meteorological event but it was also the  place where Captain Billy (George Clooney in the movie) found his life to be.  It wasn’t long ago when I felt my life was turning into a perfect storm. It seemed like every move I made just spun my life into a deeper rut. I had been in the same career from a long time and felt like I needed to move on to something else. Something different. Something where I could make a difference in the world. I studied where my interests were, I evaluated my skill set. I gathered all the information I thought was pertinent and I made a decision. Unfortunately, a decision that wasn’t based on all the realities of our current circumstance. The consequence was the risk taken resulted in a series of losses that at times felt like a life out of control and I was beginning to think like a loser.

Is Taking a Risk a Mistake? 

We all face risks in life and part of our process is to recognize the risk;

  • Investigate it
  • assess it
  • make an appropriate decision.

In the movie, Captain Billie for sure recognized the risk. He had been a fisherman all his life. He knew his options. He gathered information. He made an assessment based on that information and came to a decision. It would seem his decision was appropriate but it turned out to have disastrous affects. It cost him everything. He experienced an extreme failure of his objective. Did he make a mistake? Who really is to judge. There certainly were some circumstances beyond his control. Sometimes life is like that.

Did I make a mistake? I think so. My failure was a direct result of not considering all of my options. We are able to put ourselves into jeopardy when we haven’t established a good methodology for making decisions. I had come to a conclusion and then convinced my brain that I was right. My Rider and Elephant weren’t in Sync! (See previous Post)

You can set an objective and move forward in what might seem an appropriate way but BAM! Something happens. We experience a failure. It can be big, or it could be small. Either way it is a loss. And it hurts! It hurt me to the extent where I was reeling from one loss to another. Some as a result of my own doing and others from things I had no control of.

I realized I was beating my self up pretty good over this and if you are like me, you might too. Before you do, remember this. We ALL fail at one time or another. We ALL lose. We ALL drop the ball. Pick one. What this doesn’t make is ‘A Loser’. What it does make is an opportunity to become a ‘Learner’.

Every Failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent advantage ~ Napoleon Hill – Think and Grow Rich

What Losses do to us and how to compensate

  1. Cause us to beat ourselves up.  Stop it! Focus that energy on Solutions.
  2. Cause us to be defeated mentally.  As Jim Collins says “Confront the Brutal Facts and take massive action.”
  3. Cause you to feel insecure. Become more aware. Take inventory of your life.
  4. One loss may lead to more and bigger losses. Be sure to listen to the conversation you are having with yourself and don’t believe the lies.
  5. Losses never leave us the same. You will need to learn from the loss or it will destroy that part of you. You choose.

You aren’t a Loser

You can turn your losses into gains. How do you do that? By learning from them. Captain Billy had a loss that took him out so he didn’t have an opportunity to turn it into a gain. But maybe it wasn’t his first loss. Maybe it was a series of losses that led to one big one in the end.

If you are in the middle of a bad cycle or maybe have just experienced one catastrophe try the following.

  1. Face your reality.
  2. Recognize what you can change and what you can’t.
  3. Gather complete information on your reality. Just explore a bit further than you originally thought.
  4. Assess and Prioritize
  5. Develop a plan (Hope is not a strategy)
  6. Make a good decision
  7. Put massive action in place to vault you to your win.

Life is a series of days successfully strung together. It can be hard at times. But we need to remember to take them one day at a time. Make good decisions today and they will help you overcome and rise above the losses that will eventually come.

Have you ever overcome a loss and turned it into a gain? Let us know by either leaving a comment or sharing on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn

 

 

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