Have you ever noticed how most highly successful people are always so motivated and positive? Sometimes you wonder, “How the heck can things go so perfectly for some people?!” Well, chances are, they have had just as many struggles in their professional lives as you. We’ve all been there; when something we’ve worked our butts off for doesn’t quite work out as we had anticipated. Maybe a promotion fell through, or you didn’t get the raise you were hoping for. Maybe you really screwed up an important project or dropped the ball on a major sales lead. We have all suffered disappointments in our professional lives, but what separates the successful people from those who fall apart?
The approach you take in dealing with let-downs concerning your career is critical. There is a certain way that you must go about these situations in order to learn, regroup, move on and turn things around. Here is a guideline for what to do when things at work head south.
Control your feelings before they control you. Feel what you feel and process your emotions. When faced with major disappointments, people tend to either avoid feeling any undesirable emotions at all, or allow themselves to be consumed entirely by their feelings and slip into a serious blue funk. Neither of these are optimal reactions and both will end up really kicking you in the butt down the road. If you swallow all of your feelings, it will eventually take a toll on your health and mental state. On the other hand, if you let your sadness, anger and resentment take over, it will paralyze you. You’ve got to allow yourself to grieve and process your emotions in order to move on and let go. Try to keep it together while at work, but as soon as you have time to yourself, let it all out. Think about what happened and how it makes you feel. Write it down, talk it out, work it out, cry if you have to. Allow yourself to feel what you need to feel and then put it away.
Regroup. This is a very crucial step after you’re allowed yourself to momentarily wallow in your despair. Here is where self-talk comes in. Taking control of your self-talk is probably the most influential factor in whether you keep on trucking or throw in the towel. Don’t allow yourself to become demoralized. Understand that these types of things happen to everyone, and they happen all the time! Don’t allow that little voice in your head to be critical of you. Instead of thinking “Wow, you really screwed up that interview.”, or “If you didn’t get that promotion, you must not be good enough; you’ll never have what it takes.”, take a more neutral approach. Try not to attach emotions to the statements. A more healthy and productive example of self talk is, “I really thought I was going to get that promotion. I wonder what I could have done differently.” The best way of figuring out what really works is figuring out all of the ways that don’t work! (Although, hopefully that happens sooner rather than later!)
Figure out what went wrong. Something positive can be found in nearly all negative situations. When things don’t go quite right, figure out where you went wrong and what you can do differently next time. This gets you back in control of your situation. Try to look at the circumstances objectively in order to really benefit from your problem solving. Work on developing a support system. Whether it be your spouse, a friend, your parents or siblings, having someone to back you up in your professional goals will really spike your confidence. Have them help you hash out the situation. Chances are, they’re messed up once or twice before and will be able to help you problem-solve. Talk to a trusted colleague or your supervisor (if appropriate) and ask their opinion on areas you can improve in. I suggest waiting on that until you’ve repaired your ego a bit, because if you’re still feeling down, exposing yourself to the criticism of others can be like rubbing salt in the wound.
Come up with a game plan. Once you’ve figured out where you went wrong, come up with a plan to implement new strategies when presented with a similar situation. Don’t give up. Don’t submit to complacency. You can and will do better!
Get back in the game! In order to be successful, you've got to shake it off and dive right back into your work. Yeah, things didn’t work out how you wanted. However, no experience is wasted when you learn something about how to better go about a similar situation or when you learn something new about yourself! Next time you find yourself disappointed at work, just feel through it, reframe the situation, understand what went wrong, change your approach and get back in the game! You’ll get ‘em next time! ;)
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