Don't Make Problems Pervasive

We all run into setbacks.  It’s inevitable.

You mess up something.  You quit something.  You say something stupid to a person you care about. You go against a promise you made to yourself.

The important thing to remember is that is reality.  

Perfection isn’t real when it comes to surviving as a human being, especially if you are trying to achieve great things.

Loving relationships, growing careers, new hobbies and skills.  

These all require the discipline to persevere, to keep learning and pushing.

This is why your mindset when you encounter challenges is critical.

When obstacles appear or setbacks occur, what do you tell yourself?

Let’s say you mess up a presentation and don’t land the deal.  

How do you explain - to yourself - what happened and why?

In psychology, they sometimes refer to this process as “ABC.”

Adversity leads to beliefs which lead to consequences.

In other words, when we experience a setback (adversity), we tell ourselves why it occurred (belief), which makes us feel or do certain things (consequences).

Back to our example.

You mess up a big presentation and don’t land the deal (adversity).

You then tell yourself that you didn’t land the deal because you didn’t prepare enough (belief).  

This result then triggers you to believe that you are just not a disciplined person and it’s ruining your life (consequence).

Have you ever talked to yourself this way?

When you see that thought progression written out, I am sure you feel like that was a unnecessary escalation.  

After all, messing up one presentation isn’t the end of the world.

And one instance of not preparing doesn’t make someone a lazy person.

Exactly.

Researchers have found that one of the key elements to remaining optimistic and persevering through challenges is something called pervasiveness.

Pervasiveness refers to how far someone takes the meaning of a single setback.

As in our example, if you make one setback serve as a symbol that you yourself are fundamentally flawed, then you are going to end up negative and nowhere.

It is the actual act of talking to yourself that way that creates negativity and limits growth - it’s not even the setback itself!

As Dr. Martin Seligman puts it in his book Learned Optimism:

“People who make universal explanations for their failures give up on everything when a failure strikes in one area.

People who make specific explanations my become helpless in that one part of their lives yet march stalwartly on in the others.”

So when a setback occurs, your goal should be to NOT make it pervasive or universal.

See a setback as what it actually is - one instance of something not going your way or making a sub-optimal decision in a specific situation.  

That’s it - learn from it and move on.

What setback have you been holding against yourself?

How would it feel to accept that you’ve learned…and let it go?

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