Things don’t always go the way you might want it to ‒ things go wrong; situations don’t turn out as you planned. Things change; people change; circumstances change…
Maybe it’s a relationship that doesn’t deepen and grow the way you might have expected.
Although you can’t always control how things pan out, you can determine your own reaction when things don’t develop or end up the way you expected it to. How you react can determine the outcome by keeping you stuck in a negative situation or moving you forward with a positive view and full of optimism.
Here are 10 tips for handling a situation that might have gone wrong:
- Face it head-on. Don’t shy away from it ‒ acknowledge that the situation has progressed along a negative path.
- Contemplate it. Think back what and why it happened. What was the first sign that things were not going in the direction that you would have wanted to?
- Acknowledge that all people experience tough times. Don’t feel you are alone ‒ it happens to all of us. Everyone you know – friends, family, colleagues ‒ would have experienced some challenging events in their lives; some much bigger than yours. You probably know someone who is struggling with something right now, and you might not even be aware of it.
- Think about your role. What did you do (or not do) to allow things going south? Would it have been possible to do something that could have stopped it from happening? Did you see it coming?
- If you need to apologize to someone or discuss an error that you made, put your pride in your pocket and do so immediately. This way you will be able to correct those parts of the situation that you caused or might have had a hand in. You will learn important lessons to prevent a similar situation and move beyond the immediate event with your pride restored.
- Remind yourself that you will get through it. Acknowledge that you have overcome similar or even worse events before. You can truly boost your self-esteem with the knowledge that you will get through the situation, even if it takes a while, and that you will be able to hold your head high again.
- Constantly remind yourself how you negotiated around earlier negative experiences. Keep in mind how you got through the challenging situations in your past? Make use of that strategy again to manage your new challenge.
- Rethink your goal. Is it still possible to reach your objective now that a difficult and sometimes unforeseen situation has taken place? Do you still want to achieve the same goal?
- Find something new, if possible, or a new objective, if necessary. If it is not possible to achieve your former goal, think of the way forward ‒ where will you be able to go from here? What is the best replacement you can tackle now? This negative situation might even have a positive spin-off after all ‒ it might have opened a new possibility that never existed before. As soon as you have determined a new goal, you will find that suddenly you have a new direction, and that is something that is absolutely critical to your happiness and your success.
- Find support. When something goes awry, take a step back and turn to your close friends and family for that all-important emotional support. Talk to them about the challenge, especially if it is something big. Don’t hesitate to ask for help ‒ lean on them a bit. After all, that’s what friends and family are for.
- Get over it. Going through the motions and following the steps above can help you to ultimately reach a point where it doesn’t matter anymore. You will get over it. Accept it for what it is and that it happened ‒ that’s life. Then lift your shoulders, pick up your head and keep going. Shaking off any negative situation means you have empowered yourself to get past whatever it is and are able to continue on to a brighter future.
Anybody can successfully rise above any situation that has gone awry. Work on these ten tips and get things going right again.
You will find resources within yourself that you probably never knew ever existed.
Get started today!
You can do it!
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