Life is full of surprises, it’s a roller coaster of ups and downs, which occasionally hits us broadside out of left field, leaving us devastated. As the saying goes, if anything can go wrong it will. Once things do happen to get out of hand, it can throw us off balance as we begin to doubt our stability.
All we want is things to go well, that things will go in our favour. We want to be “winners” in life, to come out ahead, but life is hardly fair.
Bad things can and does happen to good people. Life will constantly throw us curve balls, continuously challenge us, and we need to cope.
What we realize and learn, is we can’t control everything that happens to us , nor should we try. Since we can’t control fate, it’s how we react to it that’s key.
Know Your Strengths
What we constantly do is contradict ourselves, usually based on our mood. Sometimes we’re happy, at times sad, usually hopeful, often pessimistic. We act childish, when we should be mature.
What we learn and remember when growing up, is our strengths and weaknesses, which affects what we do, and how we react. What we’ll often do, is focus more on our strengths than our weaknesses.
Our strengths are things we consistently do well, or have mastered because of repetition. It’s something we’ve perfected, so it becomes hardwired in our brains, becoming habits.
What focusing on what we do well, all while avoiding what we’re bad at, makes sense. Once we focus on our negative points, we begin to feel poorly about ourselves and our abilities.
Avoiding Weakness
Once we play to our strengths, we know the results will be virtually guaranteed. There are many for instance, who’s intimidated by public speaking, and consider it a weakness.
But what their job requires, is they make presentations in front of large groups of people. So there’s extreme anxiety, as they begin to stutter, and forget their points.
What they don’t focus on, is they have dynamic social skills, when talking to someone one on one. They’re able to establish tremendous rapport, while displaying a fantastic sense of humour.
So channel this personal strength, and use it as a bridge to connect easier with every person in the room.
Visualize you’re delivering your presentation to just one person. What doing so does, is you’re using your strengths, to overcome your weaknesses.
Preparing Ahead Of Time
There are times when we can go full speed ahead towards something, be brilliant, and get the exact results we we’re wanting, by playing to our strengths.
But more often than not, we hit snags and might blunder, just wing it, while not getting the results we had in mind.
Whatever challenge or opportunity we may be facing, we stand a much better chance of getting the results we want, if we plan for success ahead of time.
We need to know exactly what we’re wanting to accomplish. What solution or outcome would be the most beneficial.
What we need is to get extremely precise on the results we’re seeking, from whatever we’re doing, and how it would feel to get that exact outcome.
Taking The Right Action
Begin by breaking it down, as what we need is to set up things properly, so the actual desired outcome occurs.
What needs to be considered, is what we should do to make it happen, which ensures the best results, and not what we’re hoping the outcome will be.
Whatever we’re facing, it’s always possible to get the results we’re wanting, by being completely clear about knowing what we want.
We can do so while putting forth the effort into setting it up, so it will happen. The odds increases we’ll get what we want, by planning ahead of time.
There’s No Such Thing As Losing
We need to prioritize and decide what our life is about. Is it getting a good paying job we like, getting married and having kids, buying a house, getting respect, having fun. What’s known for certain, is this list is different for everyone.
What it ultimately boils down to, is doing the best we can on the things we want. To do the best for ourselves, and for those we care about the most. At times it can be a struggle, but usually rewarding.
What’s a constant, is our capacity to develop and grow. What we humans have, is an unquenchable thirst to learn and adapt. This is why we try, give our best effort, once we want something.
That’s why everything we do takes us one step closer to our goal, by doing one task at a time, and the reason why we have evolved the way we have.
Moving Forward
We constantly try, and won’t give up until we get it right. This could be the first attempt, or our 50th attempt.
The key is not to get discouraged by adopting the belief with every failed attempt, brings us one notch closer to getting it right.
What we learn, is another way to not doing something correctly, and avoid it the next time. That we’ll never do everything at 100% percent. We need to start at 1% percent, and gradually work up.
For everything we do, whether it turns out or not, there’s a lesson to be learned somewhere, somehow.
What all this means, is it’s part of the process, that everything we’re doing and learning, is part of growing forward. So there’s no such thing as losing, but learning and adapting.