Happy Wednesday,

Last week was about taking time to find stillness.  This week is about setbacks and bouncing back.

When the doctor told me I had a stress fracture I was happy to know what was going on with my leg, but I was also bummed because I knew this would be a setback for me.  had been training for some races during spring/summer that I was excited about.  Those goals were now out the window.  After that sunk in, I looked at the doctor and said, “Okay, well the fracture kind of stinks.  I want to be able to be mobile and ideally, I want to be able to get back to running and doing races.  How do I get back to that?”  At that point, he walked me through his plan to help me recover and ease my way back into running.  I agreed to his plan and followed it.  After a few months I had made nice strides in my recovery, and I recently completed my first obstacle course race since the stress fracture.  The race was a lot of fun and I and was proud of my performance.  I found a good rhythm and most importantly, had no pain throughout the event.  It was the first milestone of the comeback, and I have a few more races set up before the end of the year.  (Side note, why haven’t I quit my job yet to become a race model?  I mean, look at that pic! 😉)

What does this have to do with anything?  Whether at work or in life, we’ve all had setbacks.  What matters is what happens after we have the setbacks.  Do you get stuck where you fell, or do you find a path forward?  I do both.  Sometimes when the setback comes, I fall and get lost in that failure.  I get trapped in a cycle of self-doubt and believing it won’t get better.  I lose sight of my goals and purpose, so I struggle finding a path forward.  Do you ever feel this way?  Other times, I find a way to bounce back.  I believe the key to bouncing back is to first allow yourself to full experience the setback, because that’s where the learning comes.  Then, you must reorient yourself and refocus on your goals.  If you can do that.  If you can say, “Yeah, this setback/failure stinks, AND I still have a vision for where I want to go” then your body will find a path forward.

The challenge: How will you respond to setbacks?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry