Make setbacks more productive

Let’s make one point clear: Everyone has setbacks. This is a normal part of every type of adventure. At SparkPeople, we've seen every setback imaginable, from the unavoidable events to the mental barriers.  In fact, our experience shows that setbacks are one of the top reasons people fall off of their healthy lifestyle journey. Raise your hand if any of these sound familiar:

• Work is suddenly overwhelming and a million new things seem to come up every day.
• While you used to look forward to your sweat session, lately your motivation is at an all-time low.
• You just don't have time to cook. And meal prep? Forget it.
• The gym is slammed and you can't get to the machines you need for today's routine!
• You feel tired all the time.
• You have to travel often for work or pleasure.
• You're injured.
• You have family gatherings often and they're not exactly trying to eat as healthy as you'd prefer. Hello, Aunt Margaret's double chocolate pie!

Here’s a simple example: Thomas Edison is a giant in history, in part for inventing the light bulb. But do you think he invented the light bulb on his first attempt? No, he didn’t. Would it have been good for him to give up after the first attempt didn’t work out? No, of course not. I did research and the story is a little murky, but he made at least hundreds of attempts and possibly thousands of attempts before developing a commercially viable light bulb.

Edison was famous for how he handled failure. According to the Thomas A. Edison Papers, here is a quote from Edison as he was later working on storage batteries:

"This [the research] had been going on more than five months, seven days a week, when I was called down to the laboratory to see him [Edison]. I found him at a bench about three feet wide and twelve feet long, on which there were hundreds of little test cells that had been made up by his corps of chemists and experimenters. I then learned that he had thus made over nine thousand experiments in trying to devise this new type of storage battery, but had not produced a single thing that promised to solve the question. In view of this immense amount of thought and labor, my sympathy got the better of my judgment, and I said: 'Isn't it a shame that with the tremendous amount of work you have done you haven't been able to get any results?' Edison turned on me like a flash, and with a smile replied: 'Results! Why, man, I have gotten lots of results! I know several thousand things that won't work!'"

The point of this story is that most setbacks are not important; how you handle the setback is crucial in deciding who succeeds.

When I used to have anxiety, I was terrified to have setbacks because I was such a perfectionist. After years of self-reflection, though, I finally realized some things about setbacks:

1. I needed to learn to forgive myself for having a setback. Giving myself a pep talk after is far more productive than berating myself, which only makes things worse.
2. Remembering what I'm fighting for is key. When I thought about why I wanted to reach my goals, what my goals were, and looked at my vision collage for inspiration, I was able to refocus my thoughts and make a plan for moving forward. In a time of possible crisis where you could completely fall off your program, focus on your "why" and you'll be better equipped to handle a setback.
3. Like Edison, I started realizing that I could learn from setbacks in ways that I couldn’t have learned without that setback. In many ways, having a setback is great "adversity training." Life is not a smooth line of success, as we all know. There are likely to be obstacles in your path that you’ll need to figure out how to surmount.
4. The most important step after a setback is to immediately set and reach the smallest of goals to quickly get right back on track. It’s important to actually write that small goal down if you can, go reach it and then check it off your list. Even if it’s something simple like taking a 10-minute fitness break, eating one vegetable or organizing your house for 10 minutes. The act of writing this down and then reaching that goal reinforces that you can do this. It all comes down to reaching one small goal at a time until you reach your big goals!  This is why we make goal planning and tracking such an important part of SparkPeople.

I have learned that I’d rather have people on my team who have either made mistakes, had setbacks or have had to overcome some type of obstacle. These people often become extremely passionate about both reaching additional goals and motivating others to reach their goals, as well.

The Setback Formula