Ep 29 Transcript: Finding Growth in Every Setback

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Shauna Lynn Simon (00:00)

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And today I've got a really fun topic that I want to discuss. I want to talk about how setbacks and defeat are actually opportunities to grow and refocus and keep yourself moving closer to your goals. you know, coming off of the Olympics and the Paralympics, it was really awe inspiring to watch these athletes

compete in various sports that, know, they've, some of them have been competing for years. Some of them, this was their first Olympics and each one of them had a goal set for themselves. For some, it was to simply show up, represent their country to the best of their ability and, you know, perhaps even beat a personal best. For others, they had a specific medal standing in mind that they were looking for and some won, some lost and all of them

received great gifts of growth throughout this. know, athletes have a tendency to approach challenges as, you know, win or lose. They go to a competition, win or lose, they see it as a lesson. And this is something I think that we can really learn from. So, you know, think about Michael Jordan, for example, was cut from his high school basketball team. Serena Williams has battled numerous injuries and losses, but she's always focusing on improvement.

So athletes build up this resilience from these experiences. They focus on process over outcome. They understand that consistency, not perfection, is what's going to lead them to success. So the key message here is that life setbacks don't necessarily define you. It's how you respond to these setbacks that really creates who you are.

So like athletes, you can use defeat as motivation to get better, to improve, to strive to do better tomorrow than you did today, but always striving to do your best, whatever your best looks like. I've talked previously about the Tough Mudders that I do. And at the beginning of these Tough Mudder events, we had a little motivational speech and what we're told to do is to do our best, our honest best.

And that's really all that anyone can do because no one is better than your own best, right? Your own best is for you. So I want to talk a little bit about, you know, some of the inspiration that I've had over the years in order to combat various setbacks and, and deal with different challenges that I face. You know, I tend to put a bit of a positive spin onto things. This is just something that's kind of in my nature.

I can't say for certain if this is something I've always done or if it's something that I've learned to do and grown to do due to some of the direct inspiration in my life. So my dad has multiple sclerosis. He's been living with it sort of since 1994. He was officially diagnosed in 1997, but had his first episode a few years prior to that and didn't show any symptoms overly of MS.

aside from this episode that he had had back in 94, until 2002. And at that time he started walking with a cane. And within 11 months he was in a wheelchair. And this was obviously a challenge for not only him, but for the entire family. It was a major adjustment to our lifestyle, to our plans for the future, to everything. And, my dad handled it with so much grace.

almost annoyingly so, if I'm being perfectly honest. We would often kind of joke about, like, it'd just nice to see him just react and get frustrated and get mad and get angry. But there was nowhere to direct that anger to. This was a disease that he continues to fight on a daily basis with everything that he has to fight the progression, to fight the symptoms. But at the same time, he does have to listen to his body and what his body actually needs.

And there are certain limitations that this brings with it. So he has what's considered primary progressive multiple sclerosis. For anyone who's not familiar, essentially there are two types of multiple sclerosis, also known as MS. One is relapse and remitting, and the other is progressive. With relapse and remitting, you have various episodes. However, you can...

regain abilities to those, to your pre -episode times. You have these episodes, I'm obviously oversimplifying things, but essentially they can be very debilitating. They can change, you know, take away things like your vision, your ability to walk, your ability to perform daily functions, but you can regain those controls. With progressive MS, every day is a new challenge. Every day that disease progresses and you can't go backwards with that disease. And so,

You know, I've watched my dad living with this for over two decades now. And it always, it never ceases to amaze me the spirit that he brings to it, even on his absolute worst days. And so one day I asked him, said, dad, how do you do it? How do you keep your spirit up? How do you keep your emotions in check? Like, why aren't you getting mad? Why aren't you getting sad? What, what is it that allows you to be able to face every day?

with a smile on your face with an absolute joy for life. Because I tell people when they meet him, he really is the person that you're meeting. He's not just putting on a brave face. He really is looking for the joy every day. And so he explained this system to me essentially. He has what he calls his 15 minute rule. And he would allow himself each day 15 minutes to feel sorry for himself. says that, know, every day I get 15 minutes to feel sorry for myself.

And I can cry, I can get angry, I can feel whatever I need to feel for 15 minutes. But when that 15 minutes is up, I gotta get on with my day, because I can't live there. You can't live there. It doesn't matter how frustrating it is. You have to choose to move on. You have to choose to focus on the positive. This is incredibly powerful. And I really want you to hear this. There's just too much good in life.

miss out on if you let your challenges take over your focus, if you let your challenges take you down, don't get me wrong, there are things that will require more attention from you, the bigger the challenge is, if it is something that you can actually control, you might need to spend some time really mulling it over, weighing out your options and figuring out what to do next. That's fine, you can you can spend that energy on it, but you can't spend your energy feeling sorry for yourself. There's nothing productive about that.

It's okay to acknowledge your feelings. Those feelings are valid, but you can't stay there. You need to then pivot your focus towards action, towards gratitude, towards joy. And that's where the growth is going to happen. So let's connect this with entrepreneurship and business. In business, setbacks often feel personal. It's hard not to take it personally when it's your own, it's the results of your own actions. It's the results of your own...

work that you've done and it's almost impossible not to feel a little bit like a failure. Your service, your product, whatever it is that you're offering, you're not able to sell it, if people aren't happy with it, whatever is going on, it's easy to feel like that's personal, like you've personally failed. I've seen female entrepreneurs that I work with. So I work with

or anyone who's not aware, I'm a business coach that I work with, passion -driven female entrepreneurs. And I've watched them hit so many roadblocks. I've also watched them overcome so many roadblocks. You sometimes they think, well, I failed. They set out to do something and they failed. And what I want to do is I want to help them shift their perspective to focusing on the things that they achieved in that time. okay, so maybe you didn't get done all of the things that you had set out to do to

reach your quarterly goals. But let's focus on what you did do. What are the wins that you got? Sometimes these things happen simply because you get pulled off course by a great opportunity that you hadn't planned on, that you hadn't expected, but it's a powerful opportunity for you, whether personally or professionally. So maybe things got a little off track because you got married or you had a baby, or maybe things got a little bit off track because you decided to spend a month traveling.

or maybe things got a little off track because you decided to dedicate extra time to volunteering with a cause that means a lot to you. Whatever it was that got you a little bit off track, focus on what it is that you accomplished in that time, not what you didn't accomplish. Don't get me wrong, we wanna ensure that we are meeting our goals and setting realistic goals for ourselves, but sometimes it just takes a little bit of realigning. The key is if you do feel any setbacks, if there are things that are not working in your business,

You this is all a part of the process. So the key is to learn from those, to adjust, and then you're gonna come back stronger than ever. One of the things that I'm often telling my clients to remember is that you are writing your comeback story, okay? And I want you to think of it that way. How are you writing your comeback story? You hear these stories all the time of people who manage to turn things around in their personal life, in their professional life. How are you turning things around in your life? If you are sitting there wallowing

and just feeling frustrated by circumstances and pointing the finger everywhere that you can and saying, know, it's hopeless. Well, yeah, that's really hard to come back from. But if instead you're taking action, you're moving yourself forward, you're finding reasons to grow, you're finding ways to grow, you're finding opportunities to change your perspective, that's where it's really gonna matter. You know, I've certainly experienced my fair share of setbacks.

in my life and I've talked quite openly about these things. You know, I have at no time have I ever pretended that I have all of the answers even with my clients. You know, I have helped my clients to achieve massive successes and yet have still faced some setbacks of my own in growing my businesses and I have, you know, I've created some immensely successful businesses, but doesn't mean that everything that I have done has always been the right thing to do. I've definitely looked back at decisions that I made and said, you know what?

I probably shouldn't have done that. That didn't work out as well as I had hoped to. I don't regret trying though, because that was a lesson that I've now applied to the future of my business and to my future success. And frankly, to my client successes. We always say we want our kids to learn from the mistakes that we've made, right? It's similar for me with my clients. I don't have kids, I have cats, they don't learn from my mistakes. But I do find that my clients do have that opportunity to learn from some of the mistakes that I've made.

but they also have to learn from their own mistakes. I can't prevent them from failing. I can't prevent them from making some decisions that perhaps aren't moving their business in the direction that they want, but they need to flex that muscle, that muscle that evaluates a decision that they've made and helps them to overcome it and to reframe it as a lesson.

I've definitely, like I said, I've experienced this myself, but if I can reframe it in my head, I can create the action items that I need to move forward. Building resilience by focusing on solutions rather than staying stuck in your problems is what's going to move you forward. I want you to understand that, you know,

persistence and the belief that setbacks don't mean stop, they mean adjust and keep going. This is what's going to fuel you because let's face it, it's not a straight line in entrepreneurship especially, but even if you're not an entrepreneur, wherever you are in your career, you're facing challenges on a daily basis. If you've ever done sales calls, there is nothing more defeating than being a cold caller.

who's getting hung up on, yelled at on a regular basis. And I'm not suggesting that you go out and start cold calling by any means, but we all know that there is, know, a telemarketer job is a pretty thankless job. Even customer service jobs can be a pretty thankless job. So it's easy at the end of the day sometimes to feel as though you didn't accomplish anything, you didn't move forward, you didn't get anything done. But what did you get done? Well, if you got a hundred nos on a day where you made a hundred calls, okay, you might didn't get, maybe didn't get any sales, sure. But what did you figure out?

Well, you figured out a hundred different ways to not sell your product or service. So now how do you take that and you reframe it to take what you've learned? What's the feedback that you're getting? What were the times where you found you got more traction on something that you said versus times where you got yelled at or hung up on? So take action on a regular basis to ensure that you are moving forward with these setbacks. So if you are facing a setback, if you're facing, you know,

I don't like calling them failures. I've spoken about this on previous episodes. In my opinion, the word failure has always had this negative connotation to it. And I want us to start reframing it because a failure is a part of the process. Failure is part of your lessons. Failure is something that you need. And I want you to celebrate those failures as the lessons that they are. So when you are experiencing a setback, when you're experiencing a challenging time, I want you to first take a moment to acknowledge your emotions. Again, it's okay to be upset, but...

I want you to take a page out of my dad's book and I want you to set a time limit to that. I think 15 minutes is a really good amount of time. Maybe you choose to set a little bit less, maybe you need a little bit more, but I think 15 minutes is a really good amount of time. Process those feelings and then let them go, release them. You can always come back to them tomorrow if you really need to, but don't live in them. And then refocus on your why. Why is it that you started this journey in the first place? What are your larger goals? Setbacks are just

temporary roadblocks, but how can you take action to move through them, around them, over them? There's always a way through. There's always a way through it. And then I want you to adjust and adapt. So every setback is an opportunity to learn. So ask yourself, what can I do differently next time? How can I grow from this? How can I teach others from the lesson that I've learned here? And then I've spoken about this on previous episodes as well, but I want you to celebrate those small wins, focus on that progress.

No matter how small it is, I want you to focus on what your wins were. I recently read the book, The Gap and the Gain, fantastic book if you ever get a chance to check it out. And they talk about documenting your wins every day. So instead of at the end of the day focusing on what you didn't do, what did you do? What are the wins that you have? Every single day you can find at least three things that you're grateful for, three ways that you won in life, whether personally or professionally.

You know, even if it's just a matter of maybe you didn't accomplish everything that you set out to, but did you do your best to tackle your tasks? Did you do your best to be a good daughter today? Did you do your best to be a good friend today? You know, what is the win? It doesn't have to be big. No matter how small it is, I want you to celebrate it. This is going to help you to maintain your momentum, help you to boost your resilience over time. Okay. So what did we learn on today's episode? Well,

Setbacks and defeats are not endings. They are opportunities to grow, move you closer to your goals. And, you know, take a page from my dad's book. Life is full of challenges. But if you focus on what's wrong, you're going to miss out on all the good. There's just too much good in the world that you're going to miss out on if you're always focusing on what you can't do. Focus on what you can do. No matter what setback you're facing, trust that it's shaping you into the person that you need to be.

for the next stage of your journey. I hope that you have found today's episode helpful. I know I needed something like this today. You know, again, I have my days where I have, feel like I'm hitting some setbacks and I practice my stress management techniques and I navigate things and I try to bring a positivity to things. And there are some days where your positivity can absolutely be challenged, but I will not let it waver. And I hope that you focus on doing the same.

If you have enjoyed what we have shared in today's episode, I would love it if you could take the opportunity to please share this episode with a fellow female entrepreneur that you think could benefit from it. That's the best way to show us support. It's the best way to support your fellow colleagues. And it's a great way to share a positive message today. And I hope that you'll also continue to tune in next week for more inspirational messages. And until next time, keep thriving. You got this.