What To Do When Life Hits You Square In The Face.

Ever have a REALLY bad day? One that really SUCKS? Did you lose your biggest client in an instant? Or did you get dressed down by your boss for doing something stupid (and you thought it was brilliant)?

We all have those days. As Rocky Balboa said, "But it ain't about how hard you get hit. It's about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward."

Unfortunately, when you do get hit, you might find yourself wallowing in self pity. You might even be in one of Kübler-Ross' 5 Stages of Grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance).

Here's how I deal with it — I call it my "3 Stages of Success":

Stage 1 - Frustration

Not angry, just frustrated. Something (or someone) kicks you HARD out of control and you find yourself wheeling emotionally.

You question your worth. You start backtracking all of your actions. Add in a healthy scoop of emotions and your are downright FRUSTRATED.

Stage 2 - Reality Check

Stop the emotions for a second and let's do a quick reality check. Let's look at your situation logically — what REALLY happened? Is it the end of the world? Can you quickly recover?

Let's level-set our thinking and try to understand what happened and what we can do.

Stage 3 - Competitive Spirit

Now that you've thought logically about your situation and have come up with alternative strategies to move forward, let's access your competitive spirit.

You might say, "ARE YOU KIDDING RICH? I just got over being frustrated!" Let me be clear — you need to access your competitive spirit to move forward, take action, and never let this happen to you again. Some ideas:

What can you do right NOW? New plan? New strategy? New direction? Who can you call right NOW? Call some clients that left your service - take them to lunch. Call a scary prospect. Where can you go right NOW? Don't hunker down - get out - meet people, network, research, plan.

This is a natural process how humans adapt and EVOLVE. You hit a wall (or a wall hits you), you get frustrated, you do a reality check, and then get up and start running again.

As Rocky says, " Keep Moving Forward".

What do you do when life hits you square in the face?

P.S. Is life hitting you often? Let's talk. I've worked with many clients who've been hit hard — and we developed a successful strategy to grow. If you’re not a client . . . pick up the phone and call me (203.500.2421) — I offer a complimentary session each week to people just like you. Check me out — it might make 2017 a rousing success.

How To Deal With Frustration.

We all get frustrated. It's a natural feeling that appears when we lose control of something in our lives. It could be a project at work, a critical client, a windfall that suddenly disappears . . . anything. I've been frustrated all week. Due to a freak snowstorm in October, a large part of Connecticut is out of power. Trees fell from the weight of the snow on their leaves and downed power lines all over the state.

I live in Oxford, which is 99% down. No power. And it gets cold at night. And from what I'm hearing from the local utility, it's going to be like that for a week. So I'm frustrated. VERY frustrated.

It affects me . . . my family . . . my business. Even though I have a great wood stove and a generator, it's still hard to live normally at my home. No internet, no entertainment, keeping things cold, trying to cook, you get the idea. It sucks.

But frustration is a two-way street.

Go deeper into frustration and you get ANGRY. And that's not good. And it doesn't solve anything.

Understand and deal with the frustration and you are IN CONTROL. This is where you begin to solve your problems.

You might need to plan more efficiently. You might have to give up some creature comforts. You might have to set up alternative strategies. But let the frustration move you into CONTROL, not ANGER.

Take those steps that you need to take to get back into control. Buy that generator. Stock that wood stove. Keep your gasoline stockpile full. Do anything you need to do to make sure you move that needle into the control section of your life.

How can you apply this to your situation on the job? What can you do RIGHT NOW to get back into control?

Are You Frustrated? Good!

Work breeds frustration. It's a fact. You get frustrated when people or things knock you off balance, where you're out of control. It could be a late project, or a recalcitrant associate, or a vendor who never gets back to you.

Let's be honest — if everything worked perfectly, all the time, you would be quite bored at your job.

Did you know airplanes are off-course 95% of the time? The pilot or auto-pilot course-corrects to keep it headed in the right direction — it doesn't check once in awhile - it's an ongoing process.

Work needs course-corrections frequently. And the number and severity of the course-corrections are directly related to how much frustration you feel.

Now if everything starts to fail and you lose complete control, one of two things happen:

1. You get angry. You direct your frustration in an emotional manner towards the supposed perpetrator of the issue. You yell, you get mad, and you probably say things that are not found in the professional handbook.
2. You shut down. You lose energy and you become unmotivated. You move on to other projects and tasks and you probably procrastinate on this issue.

What would happen if you turned your frustration the other way? Instead of getting angry or shutting down, you use this situation to MOTIVATE yourself into action?

Turn your normal reactions to frustration into positive reactions.  

Next time, take a look at the more successful people at work or in your life. See how they handle frustration. The ones who are moving up quickly and are happy are the ones who figure out how to bypass their frustration and get motivated to solve the problem. They never let people and things get them down.

Let's go back to that pilot. If they got frustrated whenever their plane ventured off-course and god forbid, procrastinated on doing anything. What would happen?

Now put your career in that same situation. Is frustration, anger, or procrastination going to solve your problem and move you forward?

What techniques do you use to move you from frustration to motivation?

Many thanks to Zach Klein from Flickr for the image of Streeter Seidell.

How Not To Get Angry On The Job.

"I've had a few arguments with people, but I never carry a grudge. You know why? While you're carrying a grudge, they're out dancing." - Buddy Hackett We all get angry. It's normal.

The real question is WHY we get angry. As I tell my clients, to be happy, we need to have a certain amount of control in our lives. Not totally, but we have to have a handle on many situations to ensure that we don't go quietly insane.

Unfortunately, things do go a little out of kilter. And our natural response is to get frustrated. That's normal — something is knocking us out of our normal routine or belief structure and our body/mind reacts with frustration.

A typical example are KIDS. If you come home and the family room is a mess, you are immediately out of control (a clean room) and you react with frustration. A lot of parents (me included) might move right into anger and yell at the kids to clean up the room.

The same thing happens at work. A client, a vendor, a team member or your boss capriciously changes the project, agreement, or decision and promptly you are out of control, accelerating into frustration-land and anger is right around the corner.

How do you solve this? When you feel control ebbing away and you start to feel frustration, stop for a second and embrace the feeling. Don't zip right into anger — try to leverage the part of your brain that solves problems.

What you've really been thrown is a problem. Work is made up of problems. Your job is to solve these problems. This is just one more problem you need to solve. Take the emotion, your ego, out of the equation. Recognize it for what it really is, a problem that needs a solution.

Because the minute you get angry, you really lose control and it takes you farther away from getting back in control. Take your kids — you can yell at them — your blood pressure rises, they are scared/resentful, there is acrimony in the air, etc.

If you pull back and start directing them to clean up assertively (no anger), you'll find dutiful helpers who actually clean the room - no acrimony, no high-blood pressure.

Focus on getting back into control at work — solve the problem. Here's an added benefit — people notice when you don't get angry or fly off the handle. They pay attention when you are composed in chaos and deliver alternative solutions to solve the problem.

That's the difference between good and great leaders.

What techniques do you use to get back into control?