Have you ever gotten your dream job and salary, just to lose it a few months later due to no fault of your own?

Have you ever experienced a devastating financial loss in your business and had something you worked for years to grow from nothing, go to zero in an instant?

Have you ever experienced a betrayal by someone you thought you loved, which resulted in an unexpected breakup and the inevitable ensuing heartbreak? 

I can say yes to all of the above.

Things change.

Things fall apart.

Life doesn’t always go according to our plans.

When it doesn’t, we call that “failure.”

And from that place, where we are met with the shock of the devastating difference between our dream and our disappointment over the dissolution of that dream, it’s easy to become emotionally overwhelmed and mentally burned out. 

It can feel like the sky is falling, it’s the end of the world, and there’s nothing you can do about it. 

Thoughts and emotions overpower facts.

The subjective overpowers the objective.

The intangible overpowers the tangible.

We’re clouded by disappointment and sometimes, frankly, self pity, and our feelings about our situation hamper our ability to turn the situation around. 

It feels like all is lost, and things are hopeless.

But just because we lost a battle does not mean we have lost the war.

Every apparent setback is not as devastating as it initially seems–at least it doesn’t have to be if we choose to change our perspective and our story around it.

Here are four ways to turn setbacks into setups, regain the hope for victory after failure, and use intentional thought and action to make the best out of the worst of situations.

Focus on the negative

When was the last time someone told you to focus on the negative?

We’re constantly surrounded by people telling us to think positive, but what if there was just as much value in doing the opposite?

Enter: fear-setting.

This is an exercise made famous by Tim Ferris, author of one of my favorite and most influential books, The 4 Hour Work Week.

Fear setting is the opposite of goal setting.

With goal setting, the aim is to focus on the best case scenario, on what you want to happen.

Fear setting on the other hand, involves focusing on the worst case scenario. 

Fear-setting entails indulging in your most melodramatic, negative fantasies about what could go wrong, writing them down, and writing down what you could do to fix it.

Basically, you are putting to paper the answers to the questions:

What’s the worst that could happen?

And how could I recover from it?

At first, it may seem counterintuitive to focus on the negative.

But the exercise does have a purpose.

By putting the worst case scenario on paper, you can see that:

1 – The worst case scenario is not nearly as likely to happen as you think (fear) that it is

2 – Even if the worst scenario does happen, it is reversible or fixable in some way and you have more options to set things right again than you think you do

So if you have experienced an “all is lost” moment, write down the worst things that could possibly go wrong as a result, and allow the rest of the fear setting exercise to bring you back to the light.

In your indulgence of the worst case scenario, what you assumed to be so indisputably true about yourself, your circumstances, and your future turns out not to be so infallible after all.

You can read more about fear setting on Tim’s website.

Question your “truths”

We have a tendency to believe every thought that comes into our minds.

Then we adjust our actions, form our worldview, and allow ourselves to be affected emotionally accordingly.

But what we have to remember is that the brain is a machine.

And it is a machine that never shuts down.

It is constantly receiving inputs, processing events, assigning meaning to experiences, and attempting to sort and organize information.

All of these things influence the endless flurry of thoughts swirling around in our heads.

But the thing to remember is just that–they are thoughts.

And thoughts are not facts.

Just because a thought pops into your head, it doesn’t mean it’s true. 

Question your thoughts.

Question your assumptions.

Question your beliefs.

Your thoughts are nothing more than intellectual manifestations of involuntary reactions to your past experiences, present environment, and future fears.

Your assumptions are nothing more than untested limitations you’ve projected onto yourself and others.

Your beliefs are nothing more than stories you’ve told yourself enough times to convince yourself you no longer need to consider that an alternative might be true.

You may think that you will never find love again…

But is that really true?

You may assume that you need a college degree to make more money…

But is that really true?

You may believe that the reason you have not yet succeeded is because a certain person hasn’t given you a particular opportunity…

But is that really true?

Byron Katie, author of another one of my most influential books, Loving What Is, has a very simple 4 question framework for this concept of questioning what we assume to be accurate:

1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
3. How do you react, what happens when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without that thought?

Whenever you tell yourself a negative, disempowering story, or find yourself making a disempowering assumption, ask yourself these 4 questions, answer honestly, and you can change the direction of your life.

After doing this, you will undoubtedly find chinks in the veracity of the things you have been telling yourself.

Turn the worst into the best

About five years ago, I had just gotten promoted in a field I had been working my way up in for several years.

And by working my way up, I mean starting from handing out flyers on the street for a miniscule hourly wage in Los Angeles, to becoming a Regional Manager for a marketing department at a Fortune 100 company.

I’d gotten a raise, and was earning the highest salary I ever had in my life up to that point in all my years in the traditional workforce.

I had a new fancy title that I was finally proud to share at dinner parties, and even more exciting, the new position came with more freedom and flexibility.

But the excitement was short-lived.

Just over six months after I got promoted, the storm came in–

Or did it?

Our entire department was dissolved, and I, along with five of my counterparts and all the people who worked under us, were laid off.

This is usually the part where it’s easy to feel sorry for yourself.

To get crushed with disappointment.

To ask “why me?”

But that’s not what I wanted to happen for me.

I chose to think about the situation differently.

I took the opportunity to take what many might say is one of the worst things to happen to you, and see what it might look like if it was actually one of the best things to happen to me?

I asked myself:

What would have to happen next if I wanted to make an amazing story out of this?

An inspiring story?

A comeback story?

Instead of woe is me, and wallowing in self pity on what I lost, I asked myself:

What could I gain from this that I would not have otherwise gained had this situation not happened?

What opportunity could I pursue next that I would not have otherwise pursued had this situation not happened?

How could this be a catalyst for me for growth in every way–personally, financially, professionally, spiritually?

What’s the story about this situation that I will want to tell a year from now? Two years from now? Five years from now?

Would I want to say…?

I lost my job then fell into a depression, and sat idly by as my bank account slowly dwindled down to zero.

After a string of dozens of dreadfully awful job interviews, I finally landed another job, but it was more demanding than my last, but paid better, so I stuck with it for years and got stuck in a soul-sucking position I hated, while my youth and vitality ran out.

In panic and desperation, I took the first job I could find, which required me to move to a place I hated and work for a salary that was beneath my worth.

Or would I want to say…?

This event was the impetus for beginning a life I never imagined I could have.

This job was the last thing tethering me to my current reality, and now with it out of the way, I can finally move to a new amazing city, state, or country of my choice.

With a regular paycheck now gone, I can explore new possibilities of earning money that I wouldn’t ever have considered before–money that was now limited only by my own creativity, resourcefulness, and work ethic.

The golden handcuffs were removed for me when I was too afraid to remove them myself and I was pushed into doing the things I never had time, energy, or freedom to do when I was employed full time, which led me to living a life that was centered around living and not working.

I met incredible people, formed new relationships, discovered new hobbies, talents, and passions, and traveled to dozens of countries, racking up countless unforgettable bucket list experiences–none of which would have happened if I still had that job with only two weeks of vacation a year.

I dug deep and challenged myself to shatter my limiting beliefs, form a new identity, study and learn new skills, and showed myself I’m capable of infinitely more than I thought.

Wouldn’t it be cool if all of that was my story?

Wouldn’t it be cool if that was what happened next?

That was the story I wanted to tell five years into the future when I looked back on this time in my life.

So that is the story I started working to make true.

You can read a little more about my transition from corporate life to fulltime digital nomad and online business owner on my about page and in this article on how to take a leap of faith.

What it all comes down to is making a decision instead of accepting your circumstances as the final word on your destiny.

(I’m sorry, I even cringe myself when I use my name in a sentence, but in my defense, it is a word, and sometimes it’s the best fitting word for what I’m trying to communicate)

You can’t choose or control everything that happens to you.

But you can choose and control what you decide to do next.

Think about how many people turned their worst into their best.

Their pain into triumph.

Their loss into gain.

Their failure into victory. 

How many successful books, songs, albums, businesses, charities, organizations, relationships, ideas…came from the worst circumstances or a bad turn of events? 

Pain forces us to pivot.

Discomfort forces us to grow.

So if you are experiencing an expected setback, answer these questions:

Instead of looking at how this is setting you back, what could this be setting you up for?

How would you look at this situation differently if you approached it with the mindset of making this the best thing that ever happened to you?

What would you have to do next from this moment forward if you wanted to turn this into the moment that changed the rest of your life for the better?

Take accountability

*This one doesn’t necessarily apply to every life situation. For certain very extreme situations, it may not make sense to take this advice.

When everything is crumbling around us, it is easy to point the finger at circumstance, and assume the role of a victim.

We look at things as happening to us, and automatically excuse ourselves from responsibility.

But in some situations, a more constructive thing to do is consider:

What can I learn from this?

What part did I play in this?

What choices did I make to lead to this outcome?

What were my most consistent and habitual actions that lead up to this point?

If I was faced with the same situation in the future, how could I handle it differently so that it might result in a different outcome?

We may not always like our answers to these questions.

And just because we have answers to these questions, it doesn’t mean there were not other parties or factors that contributed to the outcome as well.

It just means that instead of disempowering yourself, you choose to empower yourself and set yourself up to never repeat this experience again.

Through radical accountability, self awareness, and reflection, you can extract lessons from your setbacks that you can take with you in the future, and allow them to shape your behavior so you can do better next time on the next thing.

When a curveball hits, and the thing you’ve worked and fought so hard for has been taken from you, you have two options:

1 – Retreat and accept defeat.

Allow it to harden you. Feel sorry for yourself. Give up.

OR

2 – Pivot and grow.

Reflect and re-strategize. Focus on what you can control. Use what you have to start over.

Even when it feels like you’ve got no ammo left, no motivation left, you’re all out of fight, and fresh out of optimism, all is not lost.

You always have more agency than you think you do and more resources at your disposal than you think you have.

Things are never as bad as you initially think.

It is possible to regroup and recover.