I have a confession. While I can be kind and supportive to others, when it comes to myself, I’m a bitch. I expect too much and when I don’t meet my outlandish expectations I beat myself up. If you had a boss treat you the way I treat myself, you’d quit.

I’ve had a bad few months. Several family members have had serious, life-threatening health issues that have been on my mind. I really haven’t been fully in the game.

In addition, recently I hosted a webinar that was a total disaster. Although it was on a service I’d used before I had tons of technical problems. The screen sharing didn’t work, people couldn’t hear, others couldn’t get on the line. It was a flop! Seriously! I wanted to crawl under the covers and forget it had ever happened.

However, it was after the failed webinar that I made my big mistake. Instead of figuring out what went wrong, finding a solution and booking a date for a replay, I allowed this “failure” to bring me to a complete halt.

I began doubting myself, replaying the problems over and over in my mind. I became paralysed, finding it impossible to make a decision about what to do next.

Not only was I second (and third and fourth) guessing myself, I stopped moving forward at all. I wasn’t doing anything to build my business. Lack of forward progress made me beat myself up even more. And … well, you get the picture.

So how did I get off this self-destructive pity track? I finally recognized that I needed help and reached out for support.

It’s not that the support I received was earth shattering or even something I didn’t already know. It’s just that sometimes you need someone else to point out the obvious. It’s like that saying, “it takes a village to raise a child.” If you’re in business, you need your own village too. You can’t do it alone.

Just taking the action to reach out for support helped me get off the pity track and start being more positive. After getting the support, I was able to feel more confident and to create an action plan for myself.

So here’s my plan for dealing with setbacks.

Feel free to use it yourself when you get off track:

1. Build a support network and use it! Don’t wait until everything falls apart. Ask for support when you need it. Make sure you have at least one person in your support network who is willing to kick you in the butt or give you a hug depending on what you need.
2. Remember that shit happens. When it does, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and do something. It doesn’t necessarily matter what action you take, as long as you do it. After all imperfect, sloppy action always beats a perfect plan that is never put into place.
3. Commit to taking three actions EVERY day to work towards your goals. I find it’s best if I plan to do them first thing in the day. Then I can’t be tempted to procrastinate. However, if you find that sometimes you can’t get started because your action items are too hard or too scary, pick something simple and easy to do first. Sometimes just getting started on something can be just what you need to have a productive day.
4. Create a checklist of tasks that need to be completed for each goal. That way when you fall down, you don’t need to try to decide what to do next. Just pick up the list and move to the next item.

Have you ever had a really crappy, horrible thing throw you off course? Please let me know I’m not alone. Leave a comment and share your tips for getting out of a funk.

Andrea J. Stenberg