I  have a confession to make…I need this post more than you do. My life has been full of hard lessons, many of which were of my own doing – my casual attitude toward risk, poor choices, unforeseen outcomes of decisions, as well as your garden variety mistakes and setbacks.

I have experienced some crushing and even devastating defeats in my life including failing out of school, starting businesses that failed, and losing thousands on investments that “went south”. In each of these moments I had a decision to make – whether I would allow defeat to permanently drive me to bitterness, or make a comeback.  In the midst of these painful moments, I had to dig deep inside myself to find a particle of faith that things could be different. As I have examined my lowest moments, I found a fairly consistent pattern of behavior that has enabled me to come back, overcome those defeats, and perform at even greater levels than before. In our worst moments are the seeds of incredible breakthroughs. What follows is the approach I generally took to come back from failure. I:

Got sick and tired of feeling bad – There comes a point when you simply have to stop the pity party, and make a decision to move on.

Got desperate to make a change – We often won’t make decisions to change until the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain of changing. Sometimes, we have to push ourselves to get desperate to change. I would do this by making a list of all the good things I am missing out on by staying the same.

Found a particle of faith – It’s hokey, but I would remind myself that “It’s always darkest just before the dawn.” We need to find just a “mustard seed of faith” that things can be different. My friend, Roger Stear brilliantly described the size of a mustard seed like this: “put your two thumbs and two forefingers. That tiny little hole in the middle is the size of a mustard seed. It doesn’t take a lot of faith, just a hint of belief makes all the difference.

Took responsibility for myself and my actions – I’ve come to realize that self-blame is not necessarily bad, because it’s one of the initial steps to taking personal responsibility. I can tend to stay in sel-blame, but I’ve come to realize to that the key is not to blame yourself unnecessarily or to stay in self-blame, but rather to own up to our part of defeat, and forgive ourselves for it, which is easier said than done. Taking responsibility is hard because it’s an acknowledgment of our imperfection, and that we still have so much to learn – a key lesson to figure out as soon as possible, because Life has a way of bringing around the same problems and lessons until we “get it.”

Let go of what I couldn’t control – This a key step in forgiving ourselves, and I often have trouble with this one. I have to remind myself that there are numerous things outside of my control – other people, traffic, financial markets, and government policy just to name a few. The key is not to use these as scapegoats, but rather to acknowledge their presence and impact, and let them go.

Learned the lessons I needed to learn – There are lessons all around us, if you pay attention – a lost sale, a setback in our business, an argument with our spouse, a moment of harshness with our children, a bad round of golf – all of these serve to reveal who we truly are and teach us something in the process, the key is to pay attention to those lessons when they appear. We do this by asking, “what am I supposed to learn in this situation?” Life Lessons won’t always come neatly packaged, instead they come disguised as moments of weakness, defeat, and failure.

Looked for past performance – you and I have seen defeat and have overcome before. It’s part of growing as a human being. We didn’t give up on learning to walk when we fell down. We didn’t give up on eating when more food ended up on the floor than in our mouths. As we grow, defeats come from more complex or sophisticated sources, but all of us have past performance to draw upon to get over our present defeats today.

Defined my vision and breakthrough – For me, the turning point comes when (often after beating myself up a whole lot) I have a moment of clarity, and declare that enough is enough. I decide to stop beating myself up, and put forward a new vision of the future I want. I have found that defining the future starts with acknowledging the current state of things, having a vision of the ideal future state, and then laying out the intervening steps to “bridge the gap” to what we want to see for ourselves.

Mobilized all energy, force, and action toward that new vision – There comes a point where the vision has to go beyond planning to real committed action. The rubber has to meet the road sometime. You need to make that call, set up that appointment, take that class, write chapter 1, or put up that website. Taking action (and lots of it) is where you bring your vision into reality.

Was patient with myself – Some comebacks take time. Some of my own personal comebacks have taken a decade or more. In 2002, I went from being poor, in-debt, and uneducated to becoming a high-earner, on my way to paying off all my debt decades early, and having enough education, knowledge, skills, experience, abilities, credentials, and reputation to provide insight, value, and solutions to virtually any situation, environment, or circumstance.

Stayed on course – I have observed that persistence wins every time. It beats intellect, ideas, ingenuity, and skill, A salesperson gets rejected an average of 7 times before they make the sale. Admittedly,  I’m guilty of often starting with great energy, but not keeping it up. I can keep up that energy for a customer solution, but not always for my own goals. I have had to develop a system of intentional planning, reminders, and motivators to keep me pressing forward in a routine of successful habits. But the payoff of persistence has been huge.

As I talked through this post with my wife she made an incredible statement and asked an even better question. She said,

“Mark, it sounds like overcoming defeat requires tremendous will power. Where did that source of inner strength come from?”

I puzzled and struggled over this question, because I realized that this process was something I did unconsciously. My initial reaction was, “the strength was just there.” But that didn’t sound convincing or satisfying even to me. So as I explored the question more, I realized the strength came from some core beliefs that I held very deeply. The first was a belief anchored in faith that ‘God wants me to have life to the fullest, that He will always be there for me, and He will never let me fall or suffer beyond what I can possibly handle’. The second core belief was something that my father taught me in childhood. Anytime I was tempted to think negatively, he would correct me as if I misbehaved. He would tell me sternly, “Nothing is impossible. You can accomplish anything.” He would rather see me fail and suffer, than to allow me to believe that something was impossible. It was one of the cornerstone lessons that he handed down to me. Over time, trial, and error I also developed a stronger sense of myself, and developed my own beliefs, including “I create my own happiness” and “God is eager to give me all that I want, the question is whether I am ready to receive it.”

I haven’t outgrown defeat in my life, because I still experience it, and the impact of past defeats as well. I believe we carry our defeats with us through the lessons we learn. I also believe if you try to live life with any sense of fullness, that you will experience some level of defeat. The difference now is that (as I get older) I can handle it with a little more maturity – knowing that I’ve overcome defeat before – and will again.

Question: How do you overcome defeat? Where does your inner strength come from? You can leave a comment by clicking here.