Speaker 1: Hi, everybody. It is Eric from the one You Feed
Speaker 1: and I am back with another mini episode. So this
Speaker 1: mini episode is about setbacks and disappointments. So one of
Speaker 1: my favorite quotes is by Chris Brogan. He's a guest
Speaker 1: we had on earlier, and it says a setback is
Speaker 1: not permission to abandon your plans. And I think that
Speaker 1: a lot of times when we get setbacks, it tends us.
Speaker 1: It tends to send us off into, uh, speculating about
Speaker 1: things versus just sticking to the plan. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: share a couple of examples from my own life in
Speaker 1: some some ways that I've dealt with it. So, a
Speaker 1: few days ago, we got news that a guest that
Speaker 1: had confirmed to be on the show was not going
Speaker 1: to be able to make it. And it was someone
Speaker 1: I had really wanted on the show and was really
Speaker 1: excited to get on, and um, so I was disappointed.
Speaker 1: I had a reaction. I don't know. For me, disappointment
Speaker 1: sort of feels like a mildly sick feeling in my
Speaker 1: stomach and a and a tightness in my chest. Um,
Speaker 1: which is completely normal reaction to when things aren't when
Speaker 1: you when you get news that you don't want or
Speaker 1: you get a disappointment or a setback that that initial
Speaker 1: feeling is perfectly normal and natural. But it's what happens
Speaker 1: next that tends to go wrong for me and for
Speaker 1: a lot of people, I think, And it's where we
Speaker 1: start to construct meaning out of what this event is. UM.
Speaker 1: We start projecting or doubting ourselves um. And we're making
Speaker 1: up stories at this point. But what actually happened in
Speaker 1: this case was that a guest that I wanted to
Speaker 1: be on the show who confirmed was unable to make
Speaker 1: it at this point due to other commitments in their life.
Speaker 1: That's the factual statement of what happened. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that that guests will never be on the show.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that the next person I asked is
Speaker 1: going to say no. It does it mean that we're
Speaker 1: not making progress, or that we're stupid, or that we're
Speaker 1: wasting our time, or that this sort of thing always
Speaker 1: happens to us. Are all the other things that is
Speaker 1: easy to spin off of a disappointment that we get
Speaker 1: in our lives. I started a solar energy company. It's
Speaker 1: been about five years ago, as some of you know,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that I learned by doing
Speaker 1: that is that starting anything new is going to create hundreds,
Speaker 1: possibly thousands of these moments of disappointment or setback time
Speaker 1: after time. Something's going to go wrong, it's gonna get
Speaker 1: in my way, or it's just plain going to be lousy.
Speaker 1: I remember really vividly a day that we were supposed
Speaker 1: to get news of our largest contract ever, and it
Speaker 1: looked completely like this deal was done. Everybody that the
Speaker 1: the CFO, everyone was saying, Yep, this thing is done,
Speaker 1: we'll be ready to sign it tomorrow. And um, it
Speaker 1: was a huge deal. It would have changed the face
Speaker 1: of the company in a really really positive way. And
Speaker 1: I remember the day that it happened. We uh, we
Speaker 1: had a program called Solar by Soldiers, and um, we
Speaker 1: had one of the veterans had called off, and so
Speaker 1: there was another one up on the ladder and I
Speaker 1: was actually out on the job site and I was
Speaker 1: holding the ladder and the phone rang and so I
Speaker 1: grabbed it and it was from the guy we were
Speaker 1: partnering with. I'm fully expecting the we got the deal
Speaker 1: and I got the Nope. The CEO pulled the plug
Speaker 1: at the last second, and I remember standing there and
Speaker 1: just feeling sick. I wanted to run away. I just
Speaker 1: didn't want to do any of it anymore. The voices
Speaker 1: of doom in my head started back up. See there's
Speaker 1: no way you're gonna make it, or why would you
Speaker 1: think you'd get a project like that. You're not big
Speaker 1: enough for that, You're not good enough for that. So
Speaker 1: what I've learned over time is it in these moments,
Speaker 1: we've got a couple of choices. The first and easiest
Speaker 1: is to allow these stories to swirl on our head
Speaker 1: and start to believe them. We can wallow in these thoughts.
Speaker 1: We can give up. Maybe we don't give up forever,
Speaker 1: but we do for a few hours, a few days,
Speaker 1: a few weeks, a month, whatever it is. Our second
Speaker 1: choice is to recognize these as thoughts and question their validity.
Speaker 1: So again, we're going to have a feeling, and that's
Speaker 1: normal and we need to we need to feel that
Speaker 1: and go through it. But we can counter the voices
Speaker 1: of doom and fertility. We can tell ourselves that it's
Speaker 1: not final, it's not fatal. We can carry on. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that what we're doing is pointless. It's a setback,
Speaker 1: it's not a defeat. This is obviously the better option.
Speaker 1: We've got to recognize first that what we're doing is
Speaker 1: we're telling ourselves stories about what all this means, and
Speaker 1: then we need to try and tell ourselves stories that
Speaker 1: are a little bit more useful. The challenge, of course,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, is that we mentally recognize that there
Speaker 1: are stories. There is still an emotional component to this
Speaker 1: that hurts, but it's really separating the the emotional feeling
Speaker 1: from i'll call it the script of dread, right where
Speaker 1: we we start spinning off into all the things that
Speaker 1: are going to happen. The best approach for me is
Speaker 1: to remind myself that these are just stories and remind
Speaker 1: myself that the future is not decided. The best thing
Speaker 1: for me was just to get back to work in
Speaker 1: the past, and still sometimes today, it's very easy for
Speaker 1: something to go wrong and me just to say fuck
Speaker 1: it and do nothing for a while except escape in
Speaker 1: some way, watch a movie, eat ice cream, spend hours
Speaker 1: whiling away the day on Twitter or Facebook, just doing nothing.
Speaker 1: But again, the biggest revelation to me and building a
Speaker 1: company and starting a podcast and all that, is that
Speaker 1: I couldn't do that if I let every disappointment throw
Speaker 1: me off. Course i'd never get anywhere. I'd get a
Speaker 1: lot of screwing around done, but I sure wouldn't be
Speaker 1: building a company or moving forward. So I've trained myself
Speaker 1: to some degree to recognize that I'm telling myself stories
Speaker 1: about what the setback means. Then I try and get
Speaker 1: back to what I had planned on doing. Get back
Speaker 1: to the next sales call, work on the next budget,
Speaker 1: record the next mini episode, send the emails that I want,
Speaker 1: invite another guest. By taking action, I tend to silence
Speaker 1: a little bit more those voices and doubts. I'm sending
Speaker 1: myself a signal that what I'm doing is important, that
Speaker 1: it matters, and that I'm not going to be easily dissuaded.
Speaker 1: So to sort of just summarize back over this, when
Speaker 1: we hit a disappointment or a setback, we're going to
Speaker 1: feel an emotion. That's fine, we should feel it, acknowledge it,
Speaker 1: and and allow ourselves to be disappointed. But what we
Speaker 1: have to watch out for is spinning off into stories
Speaker 1: of doom or what this means about how the future
Speaker 1: is going to be or how good we are, And
Speaker 1: instead of that is to get back to the work
Speaker 1: that we need to do what is the next thing
Speaker 1: in front of me that I can do, And by
Speaker 1: doing that, we're sending a message to ourselves that we
Speaker 1: can get through these things, that we're not going to
Speaker 1: be dissuaded, and that we're going to make progress. So
Speaker 1: hopefully this is helpful to you in some way. Has
Speaker 1: always loved to hear from you. UM, shoot an email, anything,
Speaker 1: and uh, if you haven't signed up for The Seven
Speaker 1: Habits of Highly Effective People, Part one is out now
Speaker 1: and you can still sign up on the website when
Speaker 1: you feed, dot net slash email. Thanks and we'll talk
Speaker 1: to you soon. Bye.