In this episode, we discuss the importance of accepting the negative events that happen to us.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe where I combine financial planning with self-development coaching for Latino professionals.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about embracing the negative things that happen to us in life. I’m a big believer that we should expect things to be 100 percent perfect in our lives. There are going to be ups and downs and we should be grateful to have both.
One of the best lessons that I learned in school was from reading the book Fahrenheit 451. This is a pretty good book that shows us a society where everything is perfect and no one harms each other, so basically, the government gets rid of all the books and people just watch television all day while being heavily medicated. The lesson I got from this book is that you can’t have your good days without your bad days. If you had nothing but good days, you will start to lose perspective on how good we have it as people.
I know I have a great perspective on life now because of the hard things that I went through in the past. Plus I’ve been to places in Mexico, Iraq, and even within the United State, to make me realize how blessed that I am. Does that mean I shouldn’t be ambitious and not try to pursue more? No, but it supposed to serve a metric to see where I could be in life.
I also think life should be challenging because it can push you to become a better person if you accept the challenge. So when you have setbacks in life like tearing your ACL playing football, failing at your first three businesses, getting a divorce, and moving in back with your parents to start over. You just have to ask yourself, who else are these setbacks supposed to happen to?
I think setbacks can serve as a learning tool to help you stay humble and there is some luck involved in being successful. I feel like I’ve been lucky in my life where I was stationed in Hawaii for three years, I was able to get a pretty good re-enlistment bonus, I was able to move to Washington, DC, and I had parents and sisters that support me.
So when the setbacks happen to me, I just take them as is. I do get upset, but then I ask myself, what is the next best step to take to help with my comeback. I heard a stat on a podcast that on average every 90 days, you will face some type of setback in life. This could be an unexpected expense like a car repair bill, a medical issue, a family issue, a social issue, an issue at work, or anything really. You will face some type of set back in the coming of the future. It might be a minor one or it might be a big one, but you have to prepare for either one.
Setbacks are going to happen in life, so when they do, I ask myself, who else are these setbacks supposed to happen to? Who am I going to choose as the victim of this setback? When I frame the question like this, it makes me realize how selfish it is to not wish setback upon yourself. They do suck, but if we embrace them, then we can become a stronger person for going through them. I also don’t see setbacks as permanent either. They are just temporary.
When I tore my ACL, I was out for 12 months but I could play basketball again. Plus it made me think about a new career that I wanted to try out which was physical therapy, and if I didn’t pursue a public health degree in college, then I don’t know where my life would be right now because my public health degree helped me think about the world differently. Plus I wouldn’t have done a 12-week study abroad in Mexico. So some interesting things did happen from that setback even if they weren’t realized until years later.
I went through a divorce 2 years ago and I was devastated but now I have a better sense of who I want to be in life and I’m pursuing things that I probably could have done if I was married like the plan to move to Colombia for two years. So a setback can change your life down the road for the positive if you treat them as learning opportunities to become a better person in the future. You can also have the perspective that they are just another freaking growth opportunity.
Life is good now for me and it’s because instead of choosing to play the victim, I just asked myself, what do I need to do to prevent this in the future or how can I get stronger from this. Sometimes it just requires me to try again and just tell myself that setbacks are part of the process that I need to go back to training on how to get better. When I went through my divorce, I started to read a bunch of books on emotional intelligence and how to become a better communicator. I feel like I’m a lot better than I was ten years ago and I learned how to be in a relationship for future ones.
So whatever you’re going through now as a setback, just tell yourself that it is supposed to happen and that it’s an obstacle that you can overcome. Most likely you will need the help of someone else because we don’t have all the answers. You might need to find a podcast, a book, a youtube video, a friend, or a professional to help you overcome the obstacles. I don’t know where I would be now if I didn’t go through therapy and read different books on how I could become better as a person. If you do this, then you’ll be able to overcome anything and become more antifragile as a person
Thanks for listening to today’s episode, to summarize it, setbacks are going to happen in our lives and they happen on average every 90 days. Some people will have more and some people will have less over the next year, but something will happen. You can get frustrated and upset, but don’t make that your permanent state of mind. If you do, then you’ll become fragile as a person instead of antifragile, where you get stronger from the setback. Plus when you have setbacks, you will have more stories to tell and maybe share them part of your message like I’m doing today.
To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at [email protected]
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
*Music outro
