The One You Feed - Mini Episode 10: Setbacks and Dissapointments

Episode Date: October 26, 2014

"A setback is not permission to abandon your plans" - Chris Brogan Eric talks about handling setbacks and disappointmentsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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where I discuss entertainment, sports, politics, and anything and everything that catches my attention. I am here to call it as I see it, and there's a whole lot of things catching my eyes these days. Listen to the I Am Rappaport Stereo Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everybody, it is Eric from The One You Feed, and I am back with another mini-episode. So this mini-episode is about setbacks and disappointments. So one of my favorite quotes is by Chris Brogan, He's a guest we had on earlier and it says, a setback is not permission to abandon your plans. And I think that a lot of times when we get setbacks, it tends to send us off into speculating about things versus just sticking to the plan. So I'm going to share a couple examples from my own life and some ways that I've dealt with it. So a few days ago, we got news that a guest that had confirmed to be on the show was not going to be able to make it. And it was someone I had really wanted on the show and was really excited to get on. And so I was disappointed. I had a reaction. I don't know, for me,

disappointment sort of feels like a mildly sick feeling in my stomach and a tightness in my chest, which is completely normal reaction to when things aren't, when you get news that you don't want or you get a disappointment or a setback, that initial feeling is perfectly normal and natural. is perfectly normal and natural. But it's what happens next that tends to go wrong for me and for a lot of people, I think. And it's where we start to construct meaning out of what this event is. We start projecting or doubting ourselves. And we're making up stories at this point. But what actually happened in this case was that a guest that I wanted to be on the show, who confirmed,

was unable to make it at this point due to other commitments in their life. That's the factual statement of what happened. But it doesn't mean that that guest will never be on the show. It doesn't mean that the next person I ask is going to say no. It doesn't mean that we're not making progress or that we're stupid or that we're wasting our, or that we're stupid, or that we're wasting our time, or that this sort of thing always happens to us, or all the other things that is easy to spin off of a disappointment that we get in our lives. I started a solar energy company. It's been about five years ago, as some of you know. And one of the things that I learned by doing that is that starting anything new is going to create hundreds, possibly thousands of these moments of disappointment or setback. Time after time,

something's going to go wrong, it's going to get in my way, or it's just plain going to be lousy. I remember really vividly a day that we were supposed to get news of our largest contract ever. And it looked completely like this deal was done. Everybody, the CFO, everyone was saying, yep, this thing's done. We'll be ready to sign it tomorrow. And it was a huge deal. It would have changed the face of the company in a really, really positive way. And I remember the day that it happened. We had a program called Solar by Soldiers, and we had one of the veterans had called off, and so there was another one up on a ladder,

and I was actually out on the job site, and I was holding the ladder, and the phone rang, and so I grabbed it, and it was from the guy we were partnering with. I'm fully expecting the, we got the deal and I got the, nope. The CEO pulled the plug at the last second. And I remember standing there and just feeling sick. I wanted to run away.

I just didn't want to do any of it anymore. The voices of doom in my head started back up. See, there's no way you're going to make it. Or why would you think you'd get a project like that? You're not big enough for that. You're not good enough for that. So what I've learned over time is that in these moments, we've got a couple choices. The first and easiest is to allow these stories to swirl in our head and start to believe them. We can wallow in these thoughts. We can give up. Maybe we don't give up forever, but we do for a few hours, a few days, a few weeks, a month, whatever it is. Our second choice is to recognize these as thoughts and question their

validity. So again, we're going to have a feeling, and that's normal, and we need to feel that and go through it. But we can counter the voices of doom and fatality. We can tell ourselves that it's not final. It's not fatal. We can carry on. It doesn't mean that what we're doing is pointless. It's a setback. It's not a defeat. This is obviously the better option. We've got to recognize first that what we're doing

is we're telling ourselves stories about what all this means. And then we need to try and tell ourselves stories that are a little bit more useful. The challenge, of course, as I mentioned, is that we mentally recognize that there are stories. there is still an emotional component to this that hurts. But it's really separating the emotional feeling from, I'll call it the script of dread, right? Where we start spinning off into all the things that are going to happen. The best approach for me is to remind myself that these are just stories and remind myself that the future is not decided. The best thing for me was just to get back to work. In the past, and still sometimes today, it's very easy for something to go wrong and me just to say, fuck it, and do nothing for a while except escape in some way. Watch a movie,

eat ice cream, spend hours whiling away the day on Twitter or Facebook, just doing nothing. But again, the biggest revelation to me in building a company and starting a podcast and all that is that I couldn't do that. If I let every disappointment throw me off course, I'd never get anywhere. I'd get a lot of screwing around done, but I sure wouldn't be building a company or moving forward. So I've trained myself to some degree to recognize that I'm telling myself stories about what the setback means. Then I try and get back to what I had planned on doing. Get back to the next sales call, work on the next budget, record the next mini episode, send the emails that I want,

invite another guest. By taking action, I tend to silence a little bit more those voices and doubts. I'm sending myself a signal that what I'm doing is important, that it matters, and that I'm not going to be easily dissuaded. So to sort of just summarize back over this, when we hit a disappointment or a setback, we're going to feel an emotion. That's fine. We should feel it, acknowledge it, and allow ourselves to be disappointed. But what we have to watch out for is spinning off into stories of doom or what this means about how the future is going to be or how good we are. And instead of that is to get back to the work that we need to do. What is the next

thing in front of me that I can do? And by doing that, we're sending a message to ourselves that we can get through these things, that we're not going to be dissuaded, and that we're going to make progress. So hopefully this is helpful to you in some way. As always, love to hear from you. Shoot an email, anything. And if you haven't signed up for the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, part one is out now. And you can still sign up on the website whenyoufeed.net slash email.

Thanks, and we'll talk to you soon. Bye. you