Life can be tough, no matter what your age may be. The journey can be somewhat of a roller coaster being full of ups and downs and sometimes has a few sideways thrown in too. When things go wrong or don’t go as planned, or when something happens to throw us off balance and doubt ourselves it can be tough to deal with.
This may be in the form of loss, change, or challenge. We may lose a loved one, be forced to change jobs, or be challenged by seeing the last child off to college.
It's natural to want things to go well and social media adds a unique dimension where we see others broadcast the facades. We all want to end up as ‘winners’. But life will always throw challenges at us, and we can’t control everything. Nor should we try. It’s not what happens to you but what you do with what happens to you that makes the difference. Here are a couple of ways that you can always come out on top.
1. Focus on Your Strengths
We’re a bunch of contradictions – sorry to break it to you but that's the reality. Sometimes happy, sometimes sad; sometimes hopeful, sometimes pessimistic; sometimes childish and sometimes mature. We also have a whole load of strengths and weaknesses that affect what we do and how we do it, but we tend to put more focus on our weaknesses and not our strengths.
A strength is something that you do consistently well– it’s something you’re just able to do, you’re hard-wired to do it well and you get an inherent satisfaction from doing it. It could be tackling and solving complex problems, empathizing with people, having a lively imagination or being able to make the perfect omelet.
Focusing on what you do well rather than what you’re not so good at makes all kinds of sense. When you look at what you’re not good at you feel bad about yourself and your ability, but when you focus on and play to your strengths, you’re guaranteed to get results, and can even eliminate any negative effect your weaknesses might have.
2. Do Some Planning, Set Things Up Ahead of Time
Sure, there will be times when you can just head into something, do brilliantly at it, and get the result you were hoping for (generally if you’re playing to your strengths), but other times you might blunder forwards, wing it, and not get the result you wanted. Whatever challenges or opportunities you’re facing, you’ll stand a much better chance of getting a great result if you set things up to succeed ahead of time. Give it some serious thought.
So, what exactly do you want to happen? What solution, outcome or result would be great? Get really clear on the outcome you want from what’s facing you and how it would feel to get the outcome you’re looking for. Then start breaking it down – what can you do to set things up so that your desired outcome happens? What needs to be put in place? What will help to make what you want to happen, happen? Who can help you bring the best to light? Finally, to ensure the best outcome, what are you willing to do?
In almost every instance in life it is best to spend more time planning for an event or outcome, than the time spent on the event itself.
Take those strategies to hear
t and start using them as tools to get where you want to go. You'll be amazed at what a couple of simple changes can do for your future.