Resilience and Overcoming Setbacks

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Bailias setbacks and stress how to become resilient . If you take one thing away from all of my content , and all of the content that I will ever do , I would love it to be this Everything is okay . Everything is going to be okay , no matter what struggle you're currently going through , no matter what setbacks , no matter what doubts you might have . I promise you will make it if you just keep going . I tell myself this mantra over and over , especially in my low moments everything will be okay . I repeat it to myself again and again Everything will be okay . I also like to tell myself no matter how many times I fall , all that matters is whether or not I get back up again . I can fail a billion times in fact I have but as long as I hang in there , I always eventually succeed . And my mindset on this is it's not even a failure , it's a learning experience . I talk more about this in the chapter everything that happens to me is good .

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I'll play a motivational video that perfectly encompasses this embracing of failure from Michael Jordan , one of , if not the best basketballer of all time . I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career . I've lost almost 300 games . 26 times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed . I've failed over and over and over again in my life , and that is why I succeed . On days when I'm sad or stressed or busy or tired or I don't have enough time or I'm feeling unmotivated or whatever else , I like to remind myself there is always something that I can do , some action that I can take to move forward . Even if it's something so unbelievably small , one tiny little baby step , that is infinitely better than nothing . Big goals are usually achieved by lots of tiny little baby steps , compounded or added up over time . Consistency over a long period of time and having patience along the way is what has gotten me to all of my goals , and humility has helped me with patience . I just remind myself I will achieve my goal when I achieve my goal . In other words , it'll happen when it happens , and my only mission is to focus on the actions that I'm taking and leave the rest up to the universe .

Speaker 1 3:15

Accountability partners and friends and support groups have done wonders for me as well . Accountability partners can pick us up when we're feeling down . They also prevent us from feeling overwhelmed or stressed in the first place by being there for us , keeping us on track , motivating us and all of that good stuff . Without accountability partners , we can fall off the rails for weeks or months at a time before we finally get back on track . And this was very much my experience in the first few years of my self-improvement , before I had lots of accountability partners . I would often go weeks , and a couple of times months , without making any progress , without working on myself , without really being happy because I didn't have anybody in my corner cheering me on and helping me . And with accountability partners , the longest that we will go is a day or two before they help us get back on track . We save ourselves months or years . I have more on accountability partners in the chapter self-reflection , mindfulness and gratitude , how to not move the goalposts . And if you want a hardcore version of accountability , you can join our coaching program . You can go to killyourinnerlosercom forward slash coaching and you will get lifetime access to our accountability group .

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I also like to take at least one day off a week , every single week . I've done this every single week for the last eight years , including weeks where I was really busy and really didn't want to take time off . I've made sure that I always prioritized having that day off . It's very meaningful to me , very special to me and helps me in a lot of ways . And on that day I do something fun or something to recharge my batteries , or even sometimes I do nothing at all , just being completely at peace . And if you have the worry of I can't afford to take the day off , what has helped me is to remind myself that the most productive thing that I could do on that day is to recharge my batteries so that I'm re-energized and ready to kick some ass over the upcoming next six days and I avoid burnout or overwhelm . I also love to use this day off to think about my goals , plan some things out , fantasize about how exciting it's going to be when I achieve the next goal , etc . And there have been some times where my mind says I can't afford to take a day off . In those moments I remind myself taking a day off each week is the most productive thing that I can do . And it is In the early days when I didn't take days off , I would feel overwhelmed , I would feel burnt out , I wouldn't be as productive and the weeks started to blend together and I felt like self-improvement was a grind , a chore .

Speaker 1 6:02

It was no longer enjoyable . Taking a little day off every week helps reset and helps make this journey fun , enjoyable , and I found I achieve 10 times more . If you find yourself stressed or in a rut , or maybe you hit a few setbacks and you're feeling a little overwhelmed I have been in that position many times . It's normal and everything will be okay , I promise . If I'm feeling that way , I like to take a little extra time off , so a few days or weeks , as long as I feel I need , same as when I've had breakdowns in the past or I get to a point of I need a break . If that happens , I take a break . I be kind to myself and I be patient with myself . I've found most goals are achieved as a marathon rather than a sprint . In other words , we've got plenty of time . It's okay if we take a few days or weeks off . Nothing bad will happen if you take a little bit of time off .

Speaker 1 7:05

I also like to do something nice for myself . When I'm feeling stressed or overwhelmed or in a rut Whatever I would do for my best friend if they were feeling overwhelmed or burnt out or sad I do that for myself . If I would tell my best friend that everything's okay , then I tell that to myself . If I would go for a walk with my best friend and listen to him or her , then I do that for myself . If I would just chill with my friend and play some video games to make him feel a little better , then I do that for myself . Whatever advice or whatever I would do for my best friend , I do that and I give that to myself .

Speaker 1 7:44

I also like to use what I call the zoom out exercise from the book . You can't afford the luxury of a negative thought . So the short version is I lay down on my bed and I close my eyes . I imagine that I'm looking down at my body , noticing myself feeling whatever I'm stressed or worried about . Then I zoom out a little bit , imagining I'm now overhead my house , looking down on the entire building . I can no longer see myself at this point . Then I zoom out a little further to the street level . I notice all the cars zooming around going about their lives . I can only just see my house at this level .

Speaker 1 8:35

I zoom out a little bit further to the level of the entire city , noticing everyone going about their lives . I can't even see my house anymore . It's lost in all the detail of the busy city and all its goings on , millions of people just doing their thing . I zoom out further still , this time to the level of my entire country . Now I definitely can't see my house , I can't see myself , in fact I can't even see my city at this level , eyes still closed . I zoom out again to the point where Earth is just a beautiful blue marble , spinning in all of its glory . Further out , I zoom to the point where the entire solar system just becomes a small speck , lost in the magnificence of the Milky Way Galaxy . I zoom out again and now our entire galaxy is just one of many in a beautiful cluster of galaxies , so many my brain can't even comprehend the magnificent scope of it all .

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I take a big , deep breath and at this point I ask myself do I really still care about the issue or the thing that's been stressing me , or is everything okay in the universe ? This exercise has brought me a hell of a lot of peace in my most stressful moments . I also like to use what I call the zoom forward in time exercise from the same book . I ask myself do I think I will still care about this problem tomorrow ? If the answer is yes , I will still care . Then I zoom forward in time a little bit . So I will ask will I care about this a week from now ? Sometimes the answer is no , I won't care , and then I'm filled with some peace , but sometimes the answer is still yes . So then I will say will I care about this one month from now , three months from now , six months from now ? And if that's still a yes , I will still care about it . Then I ask myself what about in two years ? Will I still care ? What about ten years from now ? At this stage I am almost always filled with a sense of peace . The problem that I was stressing over probably won't last forever . There will be a moment in time where everything is all sorted and it's all okay . My experience with doing this exercise is there is almost nothing that I will still be stressing about ten years from now , and most of the time most of my stresses won't even be there one week from now . So if it's all going to be okay in the future , can I speed that process up and show myself that it's all okay right now ? In some cases I can even just trust that things will kind of just take care of themselves and one day I won't care about this . So much Time will solve this problem . If I won't care about it in the future , can I let go of needing to stress about it right now ?

Speaker 1 12:01

This book you Can't Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought has a ton more techniques just like these two . It was a life-changing book for me and many of my clients and friends . Another amazing book full of techniques to deal with stress , frustration , setbacks , sadness , anger is Instant Calm by Paul Wilson . As I said earlier in this chapter , sometimes a solution to setbacks , stress or being in a rut is to take a couple of days off and just chill to recharge my batteries . This book really helps with that . I also like to write a list of five reasons this setback could actually be a good thing . Is this so-called setback even a setback at all ? What if it's actually progress and I just can't tell ? What if I'm on the right path but I'm just being impatient or unrealistic about my progress ? I talk more about this concept in the chapter . Everything that happens to me is good . Gratitude really helps me too . Often , thinking of just five things that I'm grateful for helps pull me out of a rut , helps pull me out of sadness or whatever I might be feeling in that moment . I talk more about this in the chapter self-reflection , mindfulness and gratitude how to not move the goalposts . Another question that's helped me a lot is even if I'm not physically closer to my goal , have I at least made some big mental shifts that'll help me in future ? Here's an analogy that one of my coaches gave me .

Speaker 1 13:44

When you're constructing a building , you have to lay the foundation first . During this stage it can appear like there's no real progress being made . After all , you're just laying a little bit of concrete on the ground , hardly impressive at all . It can feel like there's no progress . For months . The ground was just a flat piece of land before , and now it's still a flat piece of land , just with some concrete on it . But then all of a sudden progress . Suddenly , seemingly out of nowhere . There's some scaffolding , then some pillars , then the first floor , the second floor and before you know it , the building starts rapidly progressing Amazing , and often with

The Process and Persistence of Progress

Speaker 1 14:30

our goals .

Speaker 1 14:30

We are in the stages of laying that foundation and it doesn't look like we were building much at all . But we might be just a few weeks or months from that turning point where progress starts becoming exponential . So as long as we're hanging in there , as long as we're taking at least a tiny bit of action each day , as long as we're learning , as long as we're just figuring out what does work and what doesn't work , as long as we're improving by 1% each week , I promise you progress is happening , even if it's a little hard to spot sometimes . We never know how close we are to that breakthrough moment where it all starts to pay off very suddenly and very rapidly . Then growth explodes . We start kicking ass and we go oh my god , now I'm in the swing of things .

Speaker 1 15:24

Success feels easy as hell . Now it's almost automatic . This is how almost every single one of my big goals has gone . It feels like I'm making very little progress for months . Progress is hard to see , and sometimes that even lasts for a year or two , and all of a sudden , boom , I'm making crazy progress and the results start coming in . This is why we focus on and choose to enjoy the process of self-improvement and working on goals , because sometimes the goals take a little while , and so we want to make sure we're having fun along the way , especially if it's going to take a few months or years to achieve the things that we want to achieve and to help me be more patient as I'm going through life and working on my goals .

Speaker 1 16:08

I choose to just focus on the action that I'm taking and I do my best not to get so down if the results take a little while to come to fruition . David Hawkins , one of my favourite authors , says it best you are responsible for the intention and effort , but not the result , which is dependent on many other conditions and factors that are non-personal . In other words , I just focus on the daily actions and I work towards my goal , and I trust that it will all work out , as long as I continue and don't quit and I tell myself this mantra over and over again I will not quit , I will hang in there , I will keep going . I choose to be a stubborn bastard and I refuse to give up , and this stubborn refusal to quit , this persistence in other words , has served me so well in many of my low moments or moments of doubt and insecurity and frustration . And persistence is something that I've improved over time with practice . It's okay if you're not always perfect at it I wasn't in the early days either .

Speaker 1 17:17

I also take the time to reflect and make sure that I'm making progress and I celebrate and be grateful for that progress . And if it's ever difficult for me to tell if I'm actually making progress , what I do is I look back six months or a year ago and I say am I ahead of where I was back then six months or a year ago ? If so , I celebrate . If not , I improve or change something . I also ask myself do I want to go back in time to six months or a year ago and forget everything that I've learned over the last six months or a year ? If the answer to that is no way I don't want to unlearn all that I've learned in the last six months or a year then awesome , I have made progress . Now all that's left is to just keep going . But if the answer is yeah , I kind of wish I could have a do-over and do all of that again then that's awesome as well . Now it's time to make some big changes to really improve my life .

Speaker 1 18:14

Progress in general is often two steps forward , one step back , three steps forward , eight steps back , 15 steps forward . It can feel pretty random at times , so I choose to zoom out a little bit and as long as I'm making progress in the long run , then I'm happy . And if none of that helps , when I'm feeling in a rut or stressed or having some setbacks , then I use whatever emotion I might be feeling in that moment as fuel to take some more action . So if I'm feeling frustrated , good , I use that frustration to go and take more action . If I'm feeling a bit sad , good , I use that sadness to propel myself towards a happy , beautiful future , while obviously still enjoying the present . My sadness doesn't have to put a dampener on my enjoyment of this current moment . Right now I can be present and be okay in this moment , even while I'm feeling some sadness . Again , everything is okay , everything is going to be okay .

Speaker 1 19:15

Frustration and insecurity often fueled me more than any other emotion in the early days of my self-improvement journey . Frustration in particular was an amazing motivator for me . Insecurity was as well . These days I use the feelings of love , excitement , joy , gratitude , peace , happiness more than I do the feelings of frustration or sadness . But every now and then frustration will still creep up a little bit , so I'll use that as well . Just hang in there . Everything is okay and everything is going to be okay .

Free Chapter and Coaching Program Offer

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I promise that was a free chapter from my new video course Play to Win how I Built a Winner's Mindset . So I hope you found that helpful . If you would like to grab the full video course , the link is in the description below . You can pay whatever you can afford , even if that's literally just $1 . I also have $200 coaching calls . If you want to sit down with me one-on-one , we'll sit down for an hour or so , go over any problems that you might be having , any struggles , what you want , come up with a plan of action , pick my brain and ask me any questions that you might have . Whatever you want , however , you want to use that time Link is in the description below to that and we have a hardcore coaching program Change your life 12 weeks all in plus lifelong access to our accountability members only . Group Link is down below . As always , ladies and gentlemen , go out there , crush those goals and have a bloody game . Crush those goals and have a bloody good time doing it .