Bouncing Back From Setbacks: Building Resilience

1. Introduction: Hi. My name is catching El Joven, and today I bring a class on, bouncing back from setbacks and building resilience, which implies that we're going to talk about failure and life setbacks because her at the heart of building resilience growing up, and I'm sure a lot of you can relate. Failure wasn't something that was openly discussed. Neither were life setbacks in school. We tend to focus on success, right? It's how we acknowledge that somebody is doing better than somebody else. We give out prizes, trophies, um, scholarships at work. We have promotions. Nobody really acknowledges failure, mostly because of the shame that's associated with it. But unfortunately, this has created a society of people that don't really know how to react to failure and how to use that opportunity to learn something as they move forward. And it's It's a shame because a lot can be learned from failure and having overcome life's setbacks, and you're going to see that when you look back, success doesn't really teach you as much as having gone through something difficult in your life, and that's what I'm here to teach you. That acknowledging these failures and the setbacks and learning to see them as opportunities for growth or recalibrating your goals at the time. This is where most of the change in your life and most of the growth is gonna happen, is when you've overcome setbacks. And I think the best way I can articulate this is with a quote from one of my favorite authors. Bring a brown from her book Rising Strong. And she says that experience and success don't give you easy passage through the middle space of struggle The on Lee grant you a little grace, A grace that whispers This is part of the process to stay the course Experience doesn't create even a single spark of light in the darkness of the middle Space it on Lee instills in you a little bit of faith in your ability to navigate the dark. The middle is messy, but it's also where the magic happens. And this is what this class is gonna teach you. This is not gonna be a foolproof way to avoid failure in life. I'm here to tell you that you're probably gonna feel again just as I am. But, um, you're gonna look at failure and setbacks in a different light. You're gonna see them as opportunities to show your strengths, too. Grow stronger to learn, to recalibrate, to redevelop your goals and to take risks. And so let's get started. There's a lot to cover. 2. The Setback: So what is this resilience that we speak up? It seems to imply an innate ability or the super power to withstand anything Life throws at you. Is this true, or is it something that could be learned now? By definition, resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties, a certain toughness. It's a process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems or workplace and financial stressors. It means bouncing back from difficult experiences. I'm here to tell you that some people genetically are more resilient than others. But that, as a whole, Brazilians is like an emotional muscle that could be strengthened. And in this class I will teach you some other basic strategies to build resilience by assessing setbacks and reframing them as opportunities for learning and growth. So the thing to remember is that resilience is not a treat that people either have or do not have. Despite a certain minor genetic predisposition to being more or less resilient. It boils down Teoh behaviors, thoughts and actions that can be learned and developed in anyone. It's an emotional muscle. Remember that, and it can be strengthened over time. So let's start at the beginning, shall we? The setback. So let's set the scene. You're facing a major setback now. There number of reasons why you might be down at your ultimate low. It could be a personal failure or a situation that was beyond your control. Regardless of the cause, we now need to dig deep into dealing with the discomfort that was brought on and rely on our capacity to deal with the discomfort, challenges and adversity. I do need to add that no setback is the same. We can all agree that failing an exam is radically different from having to recover from a severe physical injury or battling a disease, and even more so from a personal tragedy of losing a loved one, for instance. Now, despite the wide range of setbacks life can throw in, you know that at the very heart of building resilience, you first need to believe that what you're going through is an opportunity to learn something, irrespective of what the setback is. Finding meaning and adversity is going to be key. It's based on this understanding that pain, misfortune and failure are not endpoints. And in order to better illustrate this, I want a quote Vivian Green, who said that life's not about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain, and that's what you're going to have to do is learn to adapt and learn to use that setback as an opportunity for growth and learning to be uncomfortable during that transition period . Now, before we begin digging into the actual steps required to bounce back from a set back, I just want to clarify that I acknowledge that no setback is the same, and certain life setbacks or life events will require. Additional resource is in order to be dealt with accordingly, especially when we're dealing with something such as grief and trauma. And possibly a certain grieving period might be required, as well as the possibility of therapy to tackle more of these serious life setbacks. And so this class is by no means a one size fits all. It is just meant to be a general guideline based on research that's been done on the topic of resilience. So I do encourage you to seek out help if you feel that what you're going through right now is more than you can handle at this time. So this class is going to be mainly focusing on building a framework for minor setbacks, which can certainly be applied in dealing with more major life events. But its limitations should be taken into consideration, so let's begin. 3. The Aftermath: dealing with the setback after half. Now you might be thinking, Sure, all this sounds great. I can certainly try toe reframe my thoughts and tell myself that there's something to be gained from the setback. But what about that dreaded moment when you realize you're facing a setback? Your heart starts racing. Your palms were sweating. Your mind is wondering in numerous places, and you're nowhere in year starting to deal with the actual aftermath. You're just trying to deal with the current physiological response. What can you do in that moment? Well, before we talk about a concrete way of dealing with the physiological uprising your might be facing, let's take a little deeper into our physiology and trying to understand why we react the way that we do. Positive psychologist Emma Seppala discusses this point in an interesting way in her book, The Happiness Track, where she explains why we humans have such a hard time recalibrating after setback. And she compares our responses to those of animals who have a much easier time returning to a restored of state following a threat which tends to make them more resilient than US humans. No animals were able to quickly return to a restorative state or what is often referred to as a rest and digest state to counter the flight or fight response, they're able to remain in that state until an extreme, life threatening situation taxes them again. And they're also able to overcome the next challenge at full strength. How is that possible? Well, the biological reason why animals have the upper hand in being more resilient to life's events is because they have a smaller new cortex, which is a part of the brain that is the most recent to have developed in a revolution. And it allows them to return their bodies to an optimal state very quickly following a threat. Now, in comparison, our neocortex is significantly larger and more developed, which, unfortunately, is why, for the most part, we still worry, even after a certain threat, or in this case, a setback has dissipated. It turns out that our brains worry despair. Imagine the worst. The dramatize and the filling gaps were not in it, for information is present by creating fictitious scenarios and wild interpretations, and this is our brain's default setting on. That's why we need to consciously make an effort to bring it back to a calm, optimal state through conscious effort, rather than relying on it entirely doing it on its own. And so how this one achieved that in that moment as you realizing what just happened to you , how do you bring yourself back to an optimal state breathing? I want to clarify that no one is suggesting that you deny the emotions by your feeling in the event of a personal tragedy. Failure or set back and attempting to suppress these emotions can actually enhance their physiological response. So the goal is not to try to control or thoughts, but accepting them. Alternatively, will weaken. Do is focus on our bodies. Our physiology can affect your thoughts, so bringing relax ation to the body can be a great way to calm those thoughts and bring a much needed break to our minds. And the best way or the fastest way that you can bring your body and mind to its optimal state is to focus on your breathing. Breathing has this power to energize you when you inhale and to calm you down when you exhale. And as Emma Seppala says, it's the only autonomic function that we can control it. When you think about controlling your heart rate, it just seems almost impossible. But breathing is something that we can all consciously dio controlling our breathing. Now it's a lot easier to change your emotions by controlling your breath than consciously trying to change your thoughts in that moment, when you realize that something something's happened to you now, one breathing pattern that's been found to be very effective in the face of stress is breathing in and out in a pattern of four second counts, and breath holds as a way to calm the adrenaline rush. In the event of heightened stress. That means breathing in for four seconds, holding your breath for four, breathing out for four seconds and waiting for seconds to begin the process again. If you really want to increase relaxation, you can increase the length of your exhales the 67 seconds, depending on what you feel you need at that moment. Now, by controlling your breathing and calming yourself down, you can change your state of mind and be better prepared in analyzing any situation that your face with and these exercises convey. Both be used prior to a stressful event as a way to build resilience and also, after a stressful event to come back to an optimal state. And in time, you're gonna notice that you're able to train your body to return to a healthy balance faster and more efficiently, and you're gonna be building resilience over time. So remember that, um, your success in overcoming setbacks is determined by the speed of your recovery. So keep that I might now, in this section, we're going to talk about reflecting on the reasons for the failure and allowing time to mourn what just happened and the followings going apply in the event that the setback is a personal failure rather than on unexpected life event. It basically means that you failed at something have performed under your expectations or those said by others, and you need to bounce back following this event now. First and foremost, you're gonna have to take some time to recalibrate. I suggest you allow yourself time to mourn what was lost because a lot of time and effort must have been put into your work, and the goal should never be to bury your feelings as if the event never happened while rushing to begin something. You instead, because grieving of failure has been shown to help ease the suffering. So don't underestimate the grieving process. Allow yourself a set amount of time to be angry, sad or go through the range of emotions you might be feeling at the time, but equally as important. Don't get lost in the process. Give yourself a set amount of time to wallow and then just be done with it. Now if this setback was something that was out of your control, someone else is doing or something that life just through a you unexpectedly, you're still gonna need to take some time to let the events in Cannes. It's still important to not rush yourself or deny yourself going through the roller coaster of emotions that might be rising at the time. So again, be understanding and compassion towards yourself in this difficult time. Now, in either of these cases, a personal failure or an unexpected life event, you are going to have to prioritize your self care. So turn your attention towards yourself and pay attention to your own needs and feelings. Engage in activities that you enjoy and that you find relaxing exercise regularly taking care of yourself. Um is gonna help keep your mind and body prime to deal with situations that require resilience in the future. And again, a self care routine is more and more encouraged. It's something that I've seen recently because it's been shown to be incredibly important to maintaining good mental health. So start doing the things that make you happy, and this is certainly going to help in dealing with this event and just grasping what just happened as you cope next, we're gonna have to spend some time reflecting on the reasons for the failure. If this was a natural personal failure. Now, if we charge blindly ahead without analyzing our mistakes, we're probably gonna make the same mistakes again, or at least were more likely to, which is really just gonna be a waste of time and energy. Now you need to take a moment to reflect on your failure and articulate why it happened. Chances are you're going to feel better about your mistake if you understand why it occurred and this doesn't mean dwelling on the failure, it just means considering them long enough to understand why they happened and imagine how you might be able to prevent them in the future, because the process of learning from you mystique should not be omitted. As we've talked about this, it is gonna be directly, um, helping you in building resilience. 4. Accepting Change: in this section, we're gonna talk about the importance of accepting change following a setback or a failure , and why we should avoid personalizing such events. Accepting change? What does this mean? Well, it means accepting the failure or the setbacks and learning from it. Now, As it happens, you might be in shock and even in a huge state of denial. But your first step has to involve accepting the failure or a setback has occurred and that you're okay with it. Even the most successful people can and will tell you about that. One time they failed. I one or more points in their lives, learn from the failure and use it as a basis to enact changes that will prevent you from repeating the same mistake in the future, if possible. But the important thing here we're going to talk about is accepting this as a learning opportunity. You can choose at this moment in time to rewrite your story. A setback or a tragedy can be an opportunity for you to re define your purpose, your life goals. It's an opportunity to look back at what the experience has taught you and how you can use it to move forward so you can reframe your personal narrative. Um, the one that shapes your views of the world in yourself and you can benefit from it but learned to find the silver lining in whatever is happening to you, whether it's a personal failure or if it's a life setback, because there's always something to be learned from a mistake or a setback, however big or small, instead of getting wrapped up in how your failure makes you feel or refusing to admit your mistake, treat the experience as an opportunity to learn something that will help you in the future . Because, let's be honest. No one can be right all the time, but being wrong always presents an opportunity to be right. Instead, at some point, here's a quote from Al Siebert, who was a leading researcher on resilience. He says that some people are able to thrive past misfortunes and others crumble. Why is that? He says, that researchers have found that highly resilient people are flexible, they adapt to new circumstances quickly, and they thrive and constant change. Most importantly, though, they expect to bounce back and feel confident that they will now, some call this characteristic of thriving and constant change and moving past obstacles, grit, Some talk about resilience. Now both of these are defined as a combination of passion and perseverance and a little self discipline that keeps us moving forward. In other words, it's this belief that failure can be overcome and you'll see this recurring pattern where we talk about the belief that something can change in the future and learning to take this opportunity to change. Many people seem to get stuck in the face of adversity, and he chose to run for the door, believing that a personal talent is the key to success when in fact resilience and grits or perseverance in the face of failure or difficulty is a better indicator of achieving success. Now, these are skills that you can learn you can cultivate by being prepared to deal with setbacks accordingly. But remember, it all starts with a change in mindset and seeing that setbacks or opportunities for growth and learning. So my advice to you is learned to adopt a growth mindset, make a tree default. You know, we can sit here and discuss how some events truly have no learning purpose, you know about stuff happens in life, which is true, but we'd be missing the point. The point is to learn to look for purpose, because that belief alone matters, and this is what's going to serve you in the face of future setbacks, you can choose to dwell on the consequences of what happened or you can choose to see with . The experience may teach you Malcolm Gladwell, author, And this was an exert from his book, David and Goliath. Now, in his book, Gladwell illustrates different levels of setbacks people might be faced with. He talks of desirable difficulties, such as having dyslexia. For instance, he talks of trauma loss in disability and shows how unconventional resiliency can create a win for people. There's more to resiliency than the act of just persisting in the face of setbacks. It's learning how to compensate for your weaknesses and allow your downside to become your upside. Now he specifically talks about a group of people that succeeded in life, not in spite of their disability but because of it. So I do recommend that book. If you're interested in learning more about that, there are some really great examples in his book, where people chose to roll with the cards that they were dealt and succeeded because of that. So if you're looking for some inspirational stories on building resilience than I highly recommend David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell Let's get back to the bacon idea that we're tryingto understand. Here is how and why we should be accepting that change is part of living. How does that benefit us? Well, one thing we can certainly agree with is that certain goals may no longer be attainable as a result of adverse situations. Whether its failure or life setbacks and accepting circumstances that cannot be changed can help you focus on circumstances that you can actually alter and you have an effect on. And the pattern you're going to notice here is that the bulk of dealing with setbacks and building resilience has to do with our beliefs and our interpretation of such events. So let's take a little deeper into these characteristics Ah, that one should strive to develop in order to build resilience. The pattern you're going to notice here is that the bulk of dealing with setbacks and building resilience has to do with our beliefs and our interpretation off such events. So let's take a little deeper into these characteristics that once you strive to develop leading psychologist or the father of positive psychology, as he's often referred to, Martin Seligman says that the way that we explain setbacks to ourselves is very important. And he talks about explanatory style that he says is made up of three main elements, one of which is permanence. People that are optimistic and therefore more resilient, see the effects of bad events as temporary rather than permanent. The next one is pervasiveness. Resilient people don't let setbacks or bad events affect other unrelated areas off their lives. For instance, they would say I'm not very good at this rather than I'm no good at anything. On the last one is personalization. People will have resilience, don't blame themselves when bad events occur and said they see other people or circumstances as the cause. They might say something like, I didn't get the support I needed to finish the project successfully rather than I messed that project up because I can't do my job and I'm no good. No personalization is something we're going to go into a little more detail in the next section. But in a nutshell, while we learned here is that we should strive to avoid seeing setbacks and failures as insurmountable problems, you can't change the fact that highly stressful events happen. But you can change how you interpret and how you respond to these events. So try looking beyond the present to how future circumstances might make. It might be a little better and note any subtle ways in which you might already feel somewhat better. As you deal with difficult situations, try to maintain a growth mindset when you look towards the future. And when you look at these past events, what have they taught you? And certainly pat yourself on the back for having gone through a difficult day. As these events occur, celebrate the small winds in the section. We're going to talk about the importance of not personalizing failures or setbacks, personalizing a setback if something role guilty off. It's something that we as humans have a tendency to dio. We tend to self criticized and ruminate over past actions, even when certain things were out of our control and we certainly weren't at fault. We tend to take the blame. So I'm here to tell you that you should try to make a conscious effort and focus on acknowledging the context under which set setback or failure has occurred tryto Avoid blaming yourself when you fail. It's important to consider the contacts surrounding our failure. Try taking an unbiased look at the factors that contributed to your figure or prevented you from success. And imagine how things could have gone differently under different circumstances at certain conditions been met with the results have changed. Now this doesn't mean not taking responsibility for your actions if you have done something wrong, but it does mean including the contacts in your analysis of that situation. Now, one way you can look at the contacts or focus on the context is by looking at past comebacks instead of focusing on how unlucky you've been in the past or how nothing ever works in your favor. Reframe this and think about how you rose from the ashes as dramatic as the seams. Think of how you've bounced back and show resilience in the past and try to look at your strengths rather than putting the blame on your actions. Try to look at. How can the context influence your actions now? Recalling the successes that you've achieved is important because it's gonna help you build our resilience needed to overcome future setbacks. So learning from your past is important, and focusing on past experiences and source of personal strength can help you learn about what strategies for building resilience work for you. And by exploring answers to the following questions about yourself and your reactions to challenging life events, you might discover how you can respond effectively to difficult situations in your life. So I encourage you to consider the following questions one by one. What kinds of events have been most stressful for me? How have these events typically affected me? Have I found that helpful to think of important people in my life when I'm distrust? To whom have I reached out for support in working through a traumatic or stressful experience? What have I learned about myself and my interactions with others during difficult times? Has it been helpful for me to assist someone else going through a similar experience? Have I been able to overcome obstacles and if so, how? What has helped me make me feel more hopeful about the future again, I understand that failures tend to feel personal, whether it's a work failure, a knackered emmick failure, because we tend to think of them as a direct reflection of our actions. But again, you need to take into account the contacts under which these setbacks occurred. So again, in order to cope, encourage you to not personalize the loss. Remind yourself that you have the power to change your circumstances. And there's some interesting research that has shown that people that succeed at this have a growth mindset and that there people who believe personalities are malleable and can be changed through actions. People that have a harder time with this tend to have fixed mind sets, these air people that assume that their traits personalities don't change. And I encourage you to reconsider this, to try to aim for a growth mindset, because what was shown is that those with a growth mindset didn't see a setback as a reflection off their worth. But as a way to improve. And for these people, rejection is less likely to carry into the future, whereas those with fixed mindsets, on the other hand, internalized rejection. They feel that it proves something was wrong with um and tend to feel shame and embarrassment about their failures. So again, personalization is not avoiding responsibility for your actions. But it is reframing the situation and turning it into an opportunity for growth and for learning by acknowledging the contacts under which said failure occurred. 5. Positivity, Gratitude & Compassion: Let's take a look at some indirect yet effective ways to help you build resilience. First, boost your positivity and practice optimism. This doesn't mean being oblivious. The life's challenges, and it certainly doesn't mean ignoring the reality of a bad situation. But it does mean focusing on the good within the bad. And if you're thinking right now, I have a really hard time doing that. I can't do this on my own than my first tip to you is find people that are optimistic and spent some time around them because the effect has been shown to be contagious. I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that it's going to require conscious efforts and may not be something that comes naturally to you and that's normal. You're just going to have to train yourself to look for the positive around you, because their brains tend to focus on negative thoughts more than positive ones. It's just our default function, and it seems to have had an actual evolutionary purpose at one time. But we no longer face the harsh environmental threats we once did, and some of these brain functions or more of a hindrance and stress contributors than actually helping us in any valuable way. So why does your mindset matter so much? Ultimately, because it influences your behavior. And because resilience means more than just thinking you're going to get through something , it means actually persisting in the face of a setback, moving forward through actions and behavior. Now, some research has shown that there's an important difference between those that persist in the face of a failure and those that do not. And ultimately it boils down to their beliefs the belief that they can develop the strength rather than having been born with certain strengths. They understand that with persistence they can prevent anything, and as a consequence they learn from their mistakes. They're more emotionally resistant in the face of failure, and ultimately they achieved more and with greater self confidence. So yourself perspective is incredibly important now. Another interesting research finding has been that resilient people are able to feel a range of both negative and positive emotions in the face of adversity, whereas non resilient people tend to feel negative emotions in bad times and positive emotions during good times, with no possibility for crossover finding some silver lining may be beneficial because you might be thinking, as this bad thing is happening to me, this setback, I acknowledge it. But I'm also very grateful that this other thing is happening alongside. Now. Be sure to understand that this this doesn't imply denying the negative emotions or suppressing them as they arise. It's about allowing them to coexist alongside positive emotions because bearing negative emotions is not healthy nor recommended. We talked about that, so aim to raise your positivity and your optimism. And this also includes nurturing a positive view of yourself, developing confidence in your ability to solve problems and trusting your instincts. These are all things that are gonna help you build resilience. Moving on now to another indirect way that you can use to build resilience. And this is through gratitude and compassion is most empathy towards others. So let's begin with gratitude. Gratitude for the things that are going right in your life helps put tragedy in perspective . Barbara Fredrickson, positive psychology researcher and author of the book Positivity, states that our emotions typically respond to dramatic changes, but a lot of good things, such as having a roof over your head, the ability to future Children, a career that you enjoy thes air, all stable. As a result, they tend to fade into the background. So what you can do is the liberally Draw your attention to thumb because thes things are gonna help anchor you during difficult times. And according to Fredrikson, when you take stock of how things might have been otherwise, instead of just how they are, you're using strategic positive thinking to increase gratitude, which then builds resilience. No, what else can you dio help? Others? Altruism during difficult times has been shown to be incredibly beneficial as much for the receiver as for the giver, It turns out, highly resilient people are skilled at seeing things from another person's point of view. They're able to show empathy and by showing empathy, the weight of the pain is not as heavy, and as a result, people tend to recover faster. Researchers spent a lot of time trying to understand this generous or altruistic behaviour that we engage in as a species, and recently a lot of attention has been shifted to this warm glow or this positive feeling that it evokes and people as a possible explanation and this feeling that we get is set to reinforce the behavior in the future. And it's been shown that when people engage in generosity or commitment to generous behavior, their happiness levels increases compared to those who do not engage in such behavior. So my last piece of advice on the topic of compassion, empathy and showing altruism is you're going through something difficult. No one is asking you to ignore that, but I am suggesting that you go out there, you reach out and you help someone else in their time of need, because this is gonna benefit both you and the receiver. And I think it's gonna help put your situation into perspective and perhaps allow you to look at it a bit more objectively. That way. Lastly, we're gonna talk about boosting your social network, make connections. Good relationships with close family members, friends or others are important at this time, accepting help and support from those who care about you and they're gonna listen to you, strengthens resilience. Some people even find out being active in certain civic groups. Faith based organizations or other local groups provide social support and can help with reclaiming hope in a difficult time and as we talked about assisting others in their time of need can also benefit the helper again. Another way to show compassion and empathy towards others and also benefiting as well. Now, one thing I do want to point out when we talk about the social network because we we talked about not personalizing a failure. But what happens when we know for a fact that something was not our fault and we fail under someone else's standards? Well, in this case, I'm gonna suggest that you follow up, that you use the social work network that you've built and follow up with these people to try to understand where you went wrong. Why did you receive a C minus on that paper? Why was your level of course participation found to be unsatisfactory? What can you do next time to improve now, students especially have been shown that you just don't engage in this kind of thing enough and it only hurts some later down the academic road. So I do encourage you to seek out social support and understanding where you went wrong, as opposed to dealing with it on your own and attempting to more forward without actually understanding what has cause of failure. Lastly, don't be afraid to ask for help. Not before you fail, but afterwards many of us air so ashamed to share failures with others, and we quickly set out to deal with them by ourselves. But it's actually critical to get outside feedback in order to remain objective about our performance and our habits. Maybe what you consider failure isn't actually a failure. Adul in someone else's eyes, Maybe you overlooked the simple detail, and you thought you'd made a major blunder. Asking for someone's help doesn't translate into weakness. It just translates in fewer mistakes down the road. So I encourage you to do that and not be ashamed because you're not the lost to fail and most likely will happen again. So discussing this with others just helps you provide a more objective outlook to your situation. 6. What's Next?: So what's next? So far, we've covered what tends to occur once we've had a life setback or failed at something. And we emphasized the importance of taking a deep breath in how moment, in order to let everything sink in. We talked about reflecting on the failure, but also about accepting this as a period of change. And that's what I want to focus on in this section. Now, the next steps that I'm gonna talk about are very loosely. They're just they're just a guide thes air, obviously gonna change from situation to situation from person to person. Everyone can take what they need from this, but I think the main message is gonna be don't get stuck in a rut. Now is a time for you to reevaluate your goals and take action and make something happen. This isn't, um, to say that you're not going through a difficult time. We understand that you are, and that's all right. But this is such a great opportunity for you to re evaluate your goal is your habits. The behaviors that are brought you here and to see this is an exciting opportunity to make something happen for you. so first and foremost, you're gonna have to take the sites of actions. And what that means is act, um, situations that you do have control over in that time. Um, you know, you might have gone through a setback, and that's something that you can't out there right now. But take the sites of actions on other aspect of your life rather than detaching completely from other problems and other stressors and wishing that they're just gonna go away, take action. We talked about the importance of mindset, but after the mindset, after being in that positive, optimistic mindset, we're gonna have to actually get out there and do something about it and show it through behavior. Then we have actively deciding to change. It's one thing to say that you would like to change, and it's another thing to be forced into reinventing yourself because of a setback or a failure. And if you want the change, but you're just merely talking about it, the results probably gonna be that you're not gonna put in riel effort into making the necessary changes that are required to achieve that. So you have to consciously decide that you're gonna take this as an opportunity to change. So how do you do that? Well, you know, this is again beyond the scope of this class, but you're gonna have to prioritize certain tasks that are gonna lead to that change. Once you face the setback, you're also gonna have do. Like I said, take action moved toward that goal. And in order to do that, you're gonna have to do some some soul searching and come up with some realistic goals. And so you're gonna have to probably think to yourself every single day. What's one thing that I know I can accomplish today That's gonna help me move in a direction that I want to go following the setback or this failure? It's forcing yourself to do something and acting on it, and this is going to require moving outside of your comfort zone. In most cases, I think a lot of you have heard that change doesn't happen in your comfort zone. You need to get out there and make yourself uncomfortable. In order to do that, you're probably gonna have to like I mentioned, get outside of your comfort zone and align yourself with the right people. Learn to network, and every so often you're gonna have to follow up on. Reflect, as you go through this transformation, look back at what you've accomplished where you need to change course as you move forward, and this is going to require taking it one step at a time. No one's saying that this is gonna be on overnight change and lastly, um, I know we live in a society of instant gratification, and really transformation doesn't happen in this type of time frame. It can take months, years to completely reinvent ourselves if that's the goal that you're aiming for. And, um, I think the best advice that I have for you is expected Fail again. Don't be afraid to fail as you move forward through this transformation, because you'll notice that that's where most of the change is gonna happen. Those are the moments in your life when you will become uncomfortable enough that you will get that pushed on nudge to want to change something about your situation. So don't be afraid of failure moving forward. But if there's one thing that I can tell you and the research support is that if you're gonna fail, which you will be quick about it and fail fast. There's been a number of benefits that have been pointed out with recording Teoh failing fast, and these include that they can. They can save you from throwing additional resource is at something that might not even work out in the end. Um, it's also much easier to establish this cause and effect when your actions and the outcomes are closer together in time. They also talk about the fact that the sooner you fail, the sooner you can rule out a given course of action, right, And this think goes back to actions and outcomes. Being close together is that you can see the effect of your actions right away, and if it doesn't work, you can readjust. And also, finally, early failure lessons. The pressure to continue with a certain project regardless because your investment in it, both financially and time wise, is not as large. There's a new word that's been thrown around lately called intelligent failure, and I think that's what it's trying to capture is there is a way to fail intelligently is knowing where to put your resources and your time and knowing when to readjust course. Not every failure has to be a complete reinvention of of yourself, but, um, they're all opportunities to grow and to learn. 7. Conclusion & Class Project: well, we've reached the end of our class. I hope you all can take something away from this class with you that can help in the event of a life setback or facing a failure. So let's quickly go over what we have learned in this class. The most important thing that you can do in the event of a setback in order to deal with the physiological response to the stressor is to use your breath to ground you. So I encourage you to practice using your breath. In any event, whenever you're stressed is used that breath that count of four breath count in order to ground yourself and bring down a physiological response. Next, I encourage you to take some time to mourn and reflect on what happened. What is it that you can learn? What is it that went wrong? Um, and if it's something that was out of your control, take the time. You need to just accept the circumstances. Then we talked about some indirect ways that you can use to build resilience. One of them was the razor positivity. Increase your optimism in life. Look for the silver lining and everything that's around you don't be oblivious to reality, but try to aim for positivity over negativity. And we also found that one way you can do that is the practice gratitude daily. Um, I encourage you to do this daily rather than just wait for a setback. Took her to start practicing gratitude. It takes some time Teoh start seeing the silver lining in your day to day life. And then we talked about giving back and helping others because both parties could benefit from that. Lastly, we talked about getting back out there, taking risks, recalibrating, taking some some time to reevaluate your goals and maybe redirect your your life at that moment. And we talked about reaching out for support for help if need be. And lastly, we talked about failing fast because there's quite some. There's quite a lot of benefits in doing so. We talked about being able to recalibrate faster. Teoh diminish. The resource is being put into a project if we fail fast, so go ahead. Don't be afraid to take risks. And don't be afraid to fail again. Look at failure and setbacks as opportunities for growth, and I think what you change your mind set, you're gonna be better equipped in dealing with with these events. And now let's get into the class project. What I've done is I've created a building resilience sheets printable that you can print out and fill out on. These are the questions that we talked about in our class, where we analyze our past mistakes and how we've dealt with them in the past. So this asks you what kind of events have been more stressful to me when I look back on my life and how did you handle these situations? This is good toe have because in the event that you're facing a failure, your mind is just not going to be in the mindset of how would have done in the past what away? What should I do? Who do I reach out to? Having everything accessible is going to be helpful. And if you feel comfortable sharing this with the rest of the class and I encourage you posting it on the skill share class project and if not, then I totally understandable. I hope you've learned a lot, or at least something that you can take with you. Thanks again for watching. Now The other thing that I wanted to talk about is I've included a link Teoh Doctor Al Sieber to the late out seabirds resiliency quiz that you can take to see where you stand on the resiliency scale. That might be another good way to just look back out, how you've handled past events, difficult events and maybe help you anticipate how you would act differently in the future . Now, the last thing that I wanted to talk about with you waas um I offer coaching services. So if you ever feel like you're going through something, that is more than you can handle or your face with having to be a just course having to develop some new goals, some new projects, you just don't really know where to begin and where to go from here. It's something that I can work with you on one on one, and if you want to reach up, you can contact me about my email and we can talk about what we can do to get you started.