The more we step into our greatness of leadership, the more we realize we’ve got some work to do.
That’s where really the major shift happens.
The evolution of consciousness as we observed different leadership and different influences and different powers and forces, which are very different things, we get to start really observing where ego is involved and where the true spirit comes through.
Today, I want to talk about the setback being the setup.
We all see or think of setbacks and have an instant, instinctive reaction to them.
Usually, it’s frustration. Sometimes it’s depression.
Setbacks are bad, right?
Nope. Not at all.
Setbacks are a good thing!
Bumps in the road actually set us up for success if we know how to use them to our advantage.
So let’s dive in and learn at just a massive scale!
Finding The Reason Behind Setbacks
How many of you have had a major setback in your life?
I know, I know. What kind of question is that, right?
We’ve all had major setbacks in our life.
We all go through what the world makes us condition respond as pain.
We have pain, we have trauma, and we have turmoil.
I’m not minimizing any of those things.
I’ve had an experience, and I coach people through all of those things.
The key is that we honor what’s happening when it’s happening.
Today, I want to spend a couple of moments helping you to maybe go deeper into a realization that can change the course of not just your career or your business, but truly your life, your emotional regulation, your happiness, your relationships, your financial situation, how you show up in the world, and all of these things tied to how you handle a setback.
And how you handle setbacks has to do with how you view setbacks and how we label setbacks.
Put a pin in that.
Challenge Yourself As A Leader
We all want what we want. Right?
We all want what we want.
There’s a tongue twister for me.
Let me challenge you as a change expert.
I spend my time in the life mastery world now, really coaching groups and teams and people to really master life.
Cause when you start mastering life, you start mastering your business because your business is simply a part of life.
Your leadership is simply the execution of different cumulations of relationships and things like that.
I think we have a little bit of a false belief or a misunderstanding around what we want, and you’ll hear me say, and I write about it in books.
I got another book coming out in the first part of 2022.
Some of the things that I believe to be true that just start universally.
You can’t change it.
It is what it is, and we’re going to lean into it because there’s a broken success model in the trades.
I want to help right that ship if you will.
What I have come to realize through myself and working with thousands now, certainly hundreds individually in a one-on-one setting, is being able to help understand how people’s brains work and where our subconscious and our conscious minds come into conflict.
That can be challenging.
Goals Are Limited
When you set a goal, what happens is you give a finite set of ways to win?
So here’s my goal.
- I’m going to go to $4 million in revenue.
- I’m going to do $10 million in revenue.
- We’re going to get to 25 team members.
- I’m going to get to 125 team members.
- I’m going to have a net profit of 15%.
- We’re going to have a pro nonprofit at 28%
It doesn’t matter, right?
The point is that you set a goal.
Here’s where I want to challenge you.
Goals are limited.
I know, I hear you:
I wouldn’t think I’d be hearing that from a success coach, from a guy that helps people create the next level of greatness in their lives. Like, what are you talking about? What is that?
Here’s what I mean by this, and go with me for a moment.
The goals that you set right now and the goals that you are executing upon right now are set with the belief, the understanding, the lens, and the view that you have in the world when you set that.
Your goals are based on the now.
And that’s great.
I’m not dogging goals.
Goals are important.
It’s important to know where we’re going and why we’re going there.
The challenge becomes when we get stuck on the goal.
Goals feel like an end. We need to be constantly setting new goals.
Do what you want with goals.
What I’m telling you is how the human mind works and how emotional regulation is crushing your fulfillment.
If your goal shifts a little bit or changes a little bit, it’s because the universe knows that’s really not what you want.
Is A Goal Really The End?
I understand where you’re going in the direction, but here’s the reality:
Once you get there, that’s not really what you’re after.
The universe or whatever you think sends you these setbacks to tell you that.
Setbacks happen naturally when you get off the path or when the path is about to turn.
We call it getting the rug yanked out from under us.
Oh my gosh, I didn’t see that coming.
It shows up in different forms in life.
Not, I’m not minimizing your pain when these occur. And I’m not saying some tragedies are good.
But they’re all opportunities to set yourself for a leap ahead.
We lose people. People quit. We fire people.
We have housing crashes.
There are pandemics.
We’re lining up these setbacks all the time.
Setbacks are a perception.
I remember when I was a kid, there used to be a phrase that went around that “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.”
I never really understood that, but I was recently talking to a client who’s a friend as well.
They recently did a trip to Africa and did some really good mission work down there and helping out and different things.
When you start traveling, you see different ways of life and certainly different economic levels.
All of a sudden, it’s like one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.
That’s interesting.
I also want you to realize what goals with what you produce in life with your own business, with your own situation, with your own personal finances; this is a reality.
We set this goal based on our current set of mind, but a goal can be limiting.
My Friend’s $2 Billion Not-Goal
How can I say that?
As you evolve, as you raise your consciousness level, as you understand was you become more aware, as you become more as stepping into your greatness, you might blow right by the goal.
I just had this conversation with a friend of mine who owns a bunch of real estate agents.
He’s going to close over $2 billion in real estate this year.
In our conversations, he said he didn’t believe he’d ever make this goal if $2 billion was what he set. He would have fallen short.
He could never have imagined reaching that goal, so he never would have tried for it.
Yet here he is with $2 billion in revenue.
Crazy.
Setback Perception Exercise
The setup in the setback is called a setback because it eliminates the direction that you’re going toward a specific goal.
I want to give you an exercise here today, and I highly encourage you to do this and share this with friends, family, you know, even if somebody is not in the blue-collar field,
Think about three of the biggest setbacks in your life.
They don’t have to be the ultimate three.
If we were on a phone or a FaceTime or zoom call and I said, “Tell me about three setbacks in your life,” these are three that come to mind relatively quickly.
What are these three setbacks?
I want you to answer four questions about each one.
#1 What was it?
#2 What did you do?
When it happened, what did you do about it?
How did you handle it?
Did you go drinking?
Did you take a vacation?
You know, did you fly somewhere and, and get out of your mind?
Did you cry?
Did you journal or write or curse?
My friends, did you scream at God?
What did you do when you had this setback handed to you?
By the way, any and all of the responses are okay.
I personally don’t drink anymore, but I used that strategy many, many times in my life.
Trust me.
#3 What did you learn?
Now you’ve moved past it.
And now you’re in a different place with it.
You might’ve chosen something that happened recently, and you might still be going through it. Then you would say, what am I learning?
But what was it? What did you do? What did you learn now?
The big caveat question is coming here:
#4 Would you change it?
And I think that’s one of the most powerful questions we can ask when it comes to setbacks in our lives.
Setbacks Help Form Us As People And Leaders
When it comes to challenges that we create, that we bring into our existence, that God, the universe, serves up to us and goes, “You know what? I think this might serve you a little bit better. “
Then we say:
I don’t want to go through that, man. I don’t want to have a challenging relationship.
God, I don’t want to have a financial crisis. I don’t want to reinvent my business. I don’t want to change my pricing. No, I don’t want to fire customers.
Setbacks are part of the cycle of life.
And that’s part of your own evolution in the human experience and as a leader.
So go with me on this and do this exercise.
- What was the setback?
- What did you do?
- And what did you learn from it?
- Would you change it?
Final Thoughts
Setbacks are an incredible education.
They’re just not one we would sign up for.
But they’re going to happen, and as leaders and people of influence in life and on our teams, we don’t have the luxury of burying our heads in the sand.
We don’t have the ability to sit and pout.
I’m not minimizing the feelings you have around your setbacks.
But growth and greatness happen in how we move on and learn from the setbacks.
Doing this exercise for every setback (or at least three big ones) will help in starting to change the way you think about them.
It’s hard to imagine setbacks as something you should appreciate and think back on with positivity.
But these hurdles are a huge part of who we are.
It’s tough work, but then again, leaders like you are tough and ready to do what’s needed to take your team to the next level.
So go do it!