Overcoming Adversity and Your Success
In tough times most people will respond in one of two ways depending on their resilience. Some will continue to do the same things they used to, but they increase the amount of work, or the amount of time they do it in. The mindset is one of; ‘I must work harder than I did before’. This type of resilience mindset can be helpful to power through smaller challenges but fall short on difficult situations. The second group of people see the change but are so resistant or overwhelmed by it that they become stuck and don’t move forward. They have low resilience skills. They typically end up waiting for old familiar conditions to return before they continue. Both of these responses cause frustration, anxiety and leaves one unable to make progress. Tough times leave many people sitting on the sidelines of life wondering how and when they can get back into the game.
Persistence over the Resistance as a Resilience Mindset
What can be done to prevent week resilience from affecting our personal and professional lives? We can learn something about persistence from Thomas Edison, the famous inventor. Edison said when commenting on the 10 000 failed attempts at creating the incandescent light bulb, “I did not fail 10 000 times, but found 10 000 ways the light bulb did not work”. Notice how he reframed his thinking, it wasn’t 10 000 failures, but 10 000 ways it did not work. He learned from each one of the experiences and eventually found success. He did more than just never give up; he took in new information from each failure and continually tried new ways of dealing with challenges to improve the results. That’s a resilience mindset!
#1 Mindset tool to Overcome Adversity – Creative Persistence
Edison had at least two mindset tools he used successfully to overcome the obstacles he faced as an inventor. The first was creative persistence; the ability to creatively try new solutions. Each time Edison tried a new solution he collected the data and learned from the experience regardless of the success of the experiment. He didn’t do the same experiment over and over again; he tried something new. His simple yet powerful ability to continue and not be attached to the results ultimately led to his success.
#2 Mindset tool to Overcome Adversity – Reframe and Rethink the Roll of Failure in Your Success
The second mindset tool Edison possessed was the ability to reframe failure into a positive form. He did not think just because he failed, he was a failure. It wasn’t personal. This perspective allowed him to continue seek new solutions through trial and error. When we try something and it doesn’t work, it is not uncommon to have the feeling of failure. Unfortunately, most people are ready to give up after just a few failures. What we need to do is understand that failure is part of the success process. In Edison’s mind, failure was part of the process to success; he gave himself permission to fail and in fact encouraged it as a way to succeed. That point is so important that I need to repeat it again “failure was part of the process to success; he gave himself permission to fail and in fact encouraged it as a way to succeed”
Change Your Success – Accept failure as part of success
By creatively trying new solutions and reframing failure into a positive form you can change how you look at what is happening in your life and business. This process of changing the way you are thinking can change your success. There will always be challenges in sales and business that will test you. How you rise to those challenges will ultimately dictate your success. Don’t get stuck in your tracks doing the same nonproductive things over and over. Your business and sales success maybe realized by simply reframing the way you look at adversity.