“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”
― Maya Angelou
Small defeats are an inevitable part of life. Whether it’s difficult circumstances or painful experiences, we all face moments where we feel defeated. But what truly matters is not the actual setback itself, but how we choose to deal with it. We don’t have to let our defeats defeat us.
Like I often say, life is only 10% what happens to you and 90% how you choose to deal with it. This means that we have the power to transform our defeats into victories, our setbacks into triumphs, our insecurities into strength.
In this article, we will explore the power of our choices and how they can help us turn our defeats into opportunities for victory.
Understanding that Life is Problem-Solving
If you really look at it, every moment of your life is spent solving one problem or another. Life is a battlefield where victories are won and defeats are suffered. Whether it’s something small like trying to be generally healthier and combat the degeneration of aging or something big like dealing with immediate survival issues, pretty much everything that you do all day long is a battle against something, a problem to be solved. The question is, how will you approach it? Will you roll over and be defeated or will you fight and go on to be victorious. Not every battle must be won but we must keep pushing forward in an effort to win the war.
It is so easy to fall victim to a defeatist attitude. I do it, you do it, we all do it, but we must resist that urge to give up and learn to break life’s challenges into smaller, easier to handle chunks. Each morning, as we look at the day ahead and cringe from the number of problems to be solved, we can just take the most pressing problem first and work our way through the list until it’s done. Life is problem solving, period. It’s not just you, it’s everyone, every animal, every insect, every plant, every everything. That’s just what this life is…solving the problems of the day in order to get to tomorrow. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing, it doesn’t have to be an overwhelming thing, it can be seen as an opportunity to grow and improve. It’s all in the perspective really.
The Power of Perspective in Problem-Solving
As long as you are in the mindset that you are defeated, you can never fight on to victory. No matter how bleak the situation seems, you must not give in to the idea that you have lost. Like the guy said in the movie The Revenant; “As long as you can still grab a breath, you fight. You breathe. Keep breathing” (or to paraphrase; as long as there is breath in your body, fight to survive, fight to win) – and much of the fight depends on perspective.
Perspective is the lens through which we see life and, believe it or not, lenses can be changed – just like changing the lens of a camera. If the lens that you are using to look at life is not serving you well, change the lens to one that serves you better. If you are not being victorious is you battles, not doing well in solving life’s problems, maybe it’s time to change the lens and get a new perspective.
Just seeing life differently won’t solve your problems for you but it will give you a new view of the problems, then you can attack them again and keep attacking until you have finally won. Problem solving is a matter of repeated effort from the right perspective. If you lack either effort or perspective, then your chances of being victorious diminish. It’s a partnership of effort and perspective that makes for a good battle plan. So, look at your situation and see if the problem is a lack of effort, or perhaps just a lack of perspective.
Proactive Problem-Solving vs Reactive Damage Control
It is always easier to fix a problem before it becomes a problem. The longer that you let a situation fester or spin out of control, the harder it is going to be to get it back on track. It’s important in your problem-solving efforts, in your battle plans, to have a good handle on things early in the game. It’s important to understand the problem before it becomes a problem, then it is just a small issue that needs redirecting rather than a large problem that needs to be solved. This makes life much easier if you can prevent problems rather than always needing to solve them.
Being proactive is one of the most important skills in life – given that life is just one long series of problems to be solved, battles to be fought, victories to be had. If you can develop the skill of being proactive, this will make life’s journey much smoother and it’s challenges much more manageable. It’s simply an issue of looking at things in an objective way, evaluating where the potential pitfalls lie, and figuring a way to go around them or prevent them before they happen. We see this mindset in the “prepper” community – not that I am advocating becoming a radical, bunker building extremist but rather, I’m saying that we could all use a bit more foresight and proactive attitude when dealing with life and life’s challenges.
So, what I’m really saying is:
Don’t let life live you…be the captain of your own ship and steer it toward the shores of health, abundance, happiness and good-will. Life gives us all lemons, but you must dig deep and find the strength to make Limoncello. Cheers my friends.