Jason: (00:04)
Coming to you from a small mountain town high in the Colorado Rockies. My name is Jason Owens and this is The Renewable Confidence Podcast — the show that helps you build confidence in yourself and in your business every day.

(00:19)
Today’s episode is titled The Five Questions You Should Be Asking Yourself After a Setback.

(00:25)
Well, we’ve all been there, we’ve had our hopes, our thoughts, our dreams, completely dashed. And here we are staring back at the, the thing that we thought was going to go better than it really did. The, it could have been the ad you put in a newspaper that was going to bring people into a sale. It couldn’t have been the Facebook ads that you were running to get more traffic to your online store, the email marketing campaign, the black Friday campaign. I mean, there are a ton of examples there of things that you have done. It could even be the outreach, right? So you, you went out to a trade show, right? Set up a booth when I did a retail show, set up a booth, right? And we’re really, really hoping on a better turnout.

Jason: (01:10)
And it just didn’t really go the way you wanted it to. When you’re walking away feeling pretty discouraged. Well, there are five major questions here that you should be thinking about to really keep you from going over the edge. Keep you from going over the deep end. All right, so the first question is pretty straight forward.

Question 1

What is the effect of thinking the way I do? Okay. What is the effect of thinking the way I do? So what I mean by that is there you are. You are, you, you just had the setback and you’re feeling like a failure. Okay? Oh, okay. So question that. How does it feel to feel like a failure? Well, it doesn’t feel too good. And if you do feel like a failure, if you internalize that, Oh, then what happens? Right? Well, you’re not going to want to go do what you need to do to go get your business rolling the next day, right?

Jason: (02:01)
So it’s a big deal. What is the effect of thinking the way you do? All right, so just just pause for a moment and really just kind of sit there and say, huh, well, what’s the effect of that? Okay, so I don’t feel good about myself. I’m not going to do the activity that I need to do to pull myself out of it. Now I’m either in a, I’m either paralyzed or worse. I’m in a downward spiral. Okay, so hit the pause button and just think for a minute about the effect that your thinking is having on you. Okay?

Question 2

Next major question. Is it possible that you have what are called some thought distortions? Now, some people call these cognitive distortions. I just, I just call this some people on the other end of the spectrum, call it stinking thinking, right? So here’s what I mean.

Jason: (02:48)
Uh, are you doing something called filtering? Meaning, are you magnifying the negative and reducing the positive? So here you are, you did this promotion, you went out there and you gave it the college try and it didn’t work well. Well, are you going automatically to, gosh, nothing ever seems to work out for me. Yeah, I might have some, some skills. I’m gonna have some talents, but gosh, that’s not really going to benefit me here. I mean, look at this. It just, it just didn’t work. Okay. So are you filtering right and filtering, is that magnifying the negative and reducing the positive? Are you overgeneralizing Oh my gosh. I went to this trade show. It was awful. The attendance wasn’t good. I am never doing a trade show again. I am never doing a trade show again. Or it could be the public speaking gig didn’t work out.

Jason: (03:34)
Right. So you got up on stage. Yeah, it was kind of a lackluster performance. Nobody really came up to you afterwards. Right. And no one signed up for your email list. Man. I’m never doing public speaking again. Are you over generalizing and last one here in this category? Uh, are you polarizing? So polarizing is, wow, this is either perfect or it was a complete stinken disaster. Okay. So you come out of this show that you’ve just done and it didn’t work out for you. Gosh, it’s either perfect or disaster. So you’re thinking, man, this is a disaster. Okay. So yeah, it’s hard to find the good in it or there wasn’t any good in it at all. Okay. So those are the, those are just three examples of cognitive distortions and I, I have literally led an entire class, a half day session on cognitive distortions and it’s, there’s, there’s a lot more in there.

Jason: (04:26)
But anyway, those, those are good to get. You started a, another one. So here we are.

Question 3

Question, question three, major category three. Am I using a double standard? Are you expecting more from yourself than you would other people? Okay, so you’ve gone out, you’ve taken the college, try it didn’t work out well. Was that the first time you tried that? Was it the 18th time you tried that? Okay. You can have wildly different expectations based upon, uh, how many times you’ve done this thing before. So if you’ve never set up a booth at that particular show before, well you don’t quite know the rhythm of that show. Right? So maybe you’ve done plenty of other shows, but you don’t know the rhythm of that particular one. So, okay, lesson learned. Is there something that you can pull away from that? So are you using a double standard?

Jason: (05:18)
Are you expecting more of yourself than you would of other people? If you were to look at someone else who, even though they have trade show experience or have public speaking experience, right? Whatever the category is for you, if you’re looking at someone else, what would you expect their performance to be? Right? How? How well would you expect them to do? Okay, so we’ll check out. Check your thinking there for that double standard, another major category.

Question 4

What is the evidence that supports your current thoughts? So what is the evidence that supports your current thoughts? Oh, do you have any real evidence other than circumstantial? It is it solid when someone who’s an outsider see it differently? So here you are, you’ve gone out, you’ve made the college try, it didn’t work and you’re feeling like a failure. Well, are you a failure? Did you have an event that didn’t go well?

Jason: (06:12)
Okay, maybe the event didn’t go the way you wanted it to. But does that mean that you now have to sit back and think that your entire business isn’t going to work and that there no use trying again? All right. Where’s the evidence for that? Because you made some sales last week and you made some sales the week before that. What’s the evidence for your entire business is no good and no one’s ever going to buy from you. Okay. All right. So what’s the evidence that supports your current thoughts?

Question 5

Okay, last major category here. What is it that triggered this line of thinking? What is it that triggered this line of thinking? Again? There you are in the scenario. You’re at the end of this thing that didn’t work out and you’re just now coming to grips with it and you’re, you’re feeling like an absolute failure. And Oh, my word, this, this isn’t ever gonna work out for me.

Jason: (07:02)
What is it that triggered that line of thinking? Well, is it the fact that someone else that you’re maybe close to, maybe they had a better show than you? Uh, is there business doing better than you? Uh, is your buddy or someone else that you are kind of competitive with or someone that you’re comparing yourself to? Are they somehow doing better than you? Maybe you left a perfectly good paying corporate job to go out and do this and now you’re kind of regretting, gosh, if I would’ve just stayed in my corporate job even though I didn’t like it, would I be further ahead? Because you know, my buddy Jim, he stayed and he just got promoted and now look at me. Um, I left that great paying job and I just managed to demote myself. Okay. So what is it that triggered this line of thinking and the reason that this one is so important?

Jason: (07:52)
Look back, do you have a history of this trigger affecting you? Do you see any patterns here? Right? So anytime you come across a thing that didn’t work, do you find yourself going into this catastrophe loop? Right? So being able to see these triggers is a big deal and it helps you kinda prepare for it ahead of time. That way. If you know, okay, coming out of this, chances are pretty good that this may or may not work. Okay, 50 50 if it doesn’t work, here’s the story I’m going to tell myself, right? So that’s something that is so powerful and so beneficial in this world is just simply having that, that reaction plan down Pat, right? You kind of have the catastrophe ahead of time, so if it doesn’t work out well, it’s not that big of a deal, right? You’re not going to go fling yourself off a cliff over it.

Jason: (08:43)
So anyway, there we go. Those are just five and again, like I said, I, I’ve done an entire half day workshop on this and thinking and how it affects your business. It’s a really deal. Now, if you like this topic, we cover this and more in the signature program at the renewable confidence workshop. So dive over to renewable confidence.com look for a link that says signature program. It’s going to be up in the top right. Dive into that and check out the signature program. If you think it’d be right for you, drop me a line just following the instructions that are on the page. I would love to talk with you more about getting you signed up for the signature program. Would love to have you there and just continually growing your sales and marketing strength over the course of the program there. So that’s it, everyone. Thanks so much for being here. Really appreciate it, and you guys take care and have a great week. Bye bye.