Are you seeing reality correctly in hard times? The two unknown mental shifts used by winners to bounce back
Adopt these mental frameworks to minimize your suffering and to get back to baseline quicker than before.
Let’s talk about the bad times for just a moment. Maybe even devastating times. Things that are completely out of our control.
From lockdowns to job losses all the way to deaths, we’re all going to, or have already experienced some really gut-wrenching moments.
And that’s all very normal. It’s all par for the course in this game of life.
When an unwanted change comes such as death, we naturally mourn and we all experience grief.
It takes time to emotionally process and feel at peace once again and everyone will grieve differently at a different pace.
But death apart, not every change or setback is death like.
Most setbacks sting, they can cut us and maybe even cut us deeply. But when these moments occur in life, we have to be resilient.
We have to stand back up and realize that this is not permanent. This pain will pass.
What we must not do, is allow these moments to spiral and to let these bad days become bad weeks and bad months and so on.
The speed at which we can recalibrate and get back to our work will be one of the major factors in deciding the trajectory of our success.
This is one of the key differentiators between those names that become world-renowned for what they do and those that don’t.
So, one of the ways we minimize getting off track is by adopting the combination of two frameworks.
- Becoming masters of self-soothing. Using self-acceptance, self-compassion and self-love to recenter. Bringing yourself out of an emotional state and reminding yourself how strong you are and appreciative of all you’ve done and been through previously.
- Radically accepting reality for what is. Not fighting for what could have been and dealing with what is here & now. Jocko Willink captures this perfectly with his mental framework of approaching every setback in life with ‘good’, and bringing himself into a solution orientated mindset.
The idea of radical acceptance isn’t a new one.
It dates back to the Stoics like Epictetus, who popularized the phrase ‘Amor Fati’, love of fate, to more recent philosophers such as the German Friedrich Nietzsche, who believed in the power of being a ‘yes-sayer’, saying yes to all of life’s affirming experiences, both good and bad.
We can learn and apply this perspective too.
For everything we have that is good in our life, we have to accept the role that ‘bad’ played.
Put another way, there literally is no ‘good’ without the contrast of ‘bad’. You can’t have one without the other.
Just think about that.
It’s a tough pill to swallow but it’s true.
If everything in our life was in the goldilocks zone of ‘good’, would that really be a life worth living?
Would that really move us?
Sounds pretty boring to me.
Nietzsche thought so too. Speaking on the role of pain in our lives, he said:
Only great pain is the ultimate liberator of the spirit… I doubt that such pain makes us ‘better’, but I know that it makes us more profound.
Looking back in your life to your toughest moments so far, did it leave you worse off long term?
I’ll bet that you’re stronger for it.
So when a tough time comes along and throws your plans and your life up in the air. Accept it. Embrace it. And even appreciate it. Then we pair this with self-soothing.
This is the idea of treating ourselves warmly and positively in order to ultimately minimize the negative effects of a given moment.
Yes, we may lean into the pain sometimes and give ourselves a stern talking to so we feel the sting.
That will wake us up and make sure we take increased responsibility and extreme ownership in a Jocko like manner to prevent a similar situation from happening again, that’s for sure.
But going overboard on self-criticism isn’t a wise way to deal with a bad moment.
It isn’t likely to get us back on the horse with determination and optimism.
This is precisely what we need when we’ve just been metaphorically punched in the gut.
Brené Brown neatly sums this idea of self-soothing up when she says:
Talk to yourself like you would to someone you love.
That’s exactly how to think about it.
If you wouldn’t talk to someone you deeply care about like that, then my friend, you are no different.
Be kind to yourself.
