Overcoming Adversity: Making It Happen Despite Setbacks

When faced with a setback, it's important to remember that success often requires perseverance and hard work. Instead of letting setbacks discourage you, use them as fuel to push yourself even harder towards your goals.

To make it happen in spite of the setback, you need to be willing to put in the work. This means staying committed and dedicated, even when things don't go according to plan. It may require adjusting your strategy or seeking alternative solutions, but the key is to keep moving forward.

Setbacks can be valuable learning opportunities. They provide a chance for self-reflection and growth. Use this time to analyze what went wrong and identify areas for improvement. By doing so, you can develop resilience and gain valuable insights that will help you overcome future challenges.

Remember that success rarely comes without obstacles along the way. It's how we respond to these setbacks that truly defines our ability to achieve our goals. So stay focused, stay determined, and keep pushing forward – because with hard work and perseverance, you can make it happen despite any setback that comes your way.

Transcript

Welcome to the Off Balance Podcast. Today is make it Happen Monday with your host, Dr. Brooks, certified master, life coach, entrepreneur, and author. Stay tuned to get your tips on how to make it happen. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the new segment of Off Balance podcast. Make it happen Monday. Each Monday, I will share a short story story with you, and then I will give you three tips on how you can make it happen. So many of you familiar with my story because I kind of talk about it in my book, six Pillars of Resilience. And I also talk about it a lot with my coaching clients because I am a certified life coach and I work in the area of resilience. And so basically, I teach people how to develop resilience in the face of adversity. And I really enjoy it because I don't think a lot of us realize the inner strength that we have. And so a lot of the times we feel like we're not going to get through a situation. And I can attest that you will get through it, and I can assure you that not only will you get through it, but you will get through it better than you were before. And so I want to share a story with you. It in 2017, I enrolled in Capella University in a doctor of business administration program with a specialization in human resources. I was at the school approximately a year and a half. I had completed all of my coursework and I was all but dissertation. I had a mentor that was assigned to me. 1s Um, at first, I really I really didn't have an opinion about this particular mentor. Have you ever just met someone and you you know for a fact that you couldn't be friends with them, but, you know, they don't really bother you too much, so you you are okay to work with them? And so that's basically how the relationship started. It was nothing spectacular about this person, but there was nothing that piqued my interest to make me want to pursue a relationship with them outside of mentoring. And so probably a couple of months into the relationship, I started to notice that she was just very hard on my writing, and she was just not wavering. She approached it as if it was her study and not mine. They always tell you that the researcher is the primary instrument for research, but yet there are so many other opinions that go into completing a dissertation to where it's really not the researcher. It's those that have control to say yes or no, essentially. And so 1s she failed me. 1s And the university policy is that if you get two 1s unsatisfactory scores, that you get kicked out of the program. And so she failed me, and I came back the next semester. I passed, and then I came back 2s the second semester following the Unsatisfactory. And she failed me a second time. And so I got an email from the school, notifying me, that I had been administratively withdrawn from the school for failure to move forth with the dissertation writing process. And I immediately heard the voice of God tell me not to 2s rebuild it, not to appeal it, to walk away. And just to give you some backstory on that, the first day at that school was horrible for me. They entered my Social Security number wrong, so I missed out on getting a scholarship. It was always something with that school. And so, from the beginning, I had no business there. But I was there, and I will talk about that at another time. But I said all that to say, once I was administratively withdrawn from the school, I had. 2s A lot of emotions. 3s I felt angry because I had put in so much work. And I think at the time I either had a 3.8 or 3.9 GPA, because I did get a C in one class. And so my GPA wasn't 4.0, but I was very close. I think I was like a 3.83.9. And so for me to have such a high GPA to be kicked out of a program, it was disheartening for me. Second, I had so many people rooting for me because I had let everyone know at my church and my family, hey, I'm pursuing my doctorate degree. And so many people would check on me. So many people would just tell me, they can't wait, they're so proud of me. And so I felt obligated to tell everyone, hey, I've been kicked out of the program because I shared with them that I got accepted to the program. And so I just felt the need to be transparent. And so then I had to deal with the emotions of 1s I don't think it was embarrassment. I think it was a little more of disappointing them, like letting them down. Especially if you are a person in your family and you are pursuing higher education, and maybe everyone else doesn't have higher education, people can look up to you for that. And so I just felt like I was obligated in that sense as well, to be honest about what I was going through. And so I made the public a statement. I let people know via my Facebook what happened, and I just told them that I needed time to process it, but I assured them that I would continue my journey and I would keep them posted. And so secretly, I cried a couple of days, and secretly I processed it, because I had to do some self reflection. And I had to ask myself, why was I pursuing the degree? 2s I had to go back to my why. So my first tip for you is if you find yourself facing adversity, whether it's a setback, whether it's an obstacle, whether it's a delay, I want you to always go back to your why. What is your motivation for doing it? Is it for personal gain? Is it for people for validation? What is it for? Because you always want to make sure that your heart posture is in a place of integral and it's in a place where you're doing it because it's something that you want to do. And it's not because you're trying to seek validation or you think if you do this, it will make you appear to be a certain way or whatever the case is. You just have to make sure that your motives and your intentions are authentic and that they are coming from a right place. And so I did self reflection. And after I looked at everything, my why remained the same. My why for pursuing a doctorate degree was simply because God told me that I can do it and God wanted me to do it. And so I knew that my heart was in the right place, and so I knew that I could not allow this to stop me from pursuing it. So the first tip is to do self reflection and to make sure your why is your why and make sure that your why is something that you're doing it for yourself and you're not doing it for other people. And then the second thing that I had to do was I had to recommit myself to the time frame I had made in my mind that I wanted to earn my doctorate degree in three years. And I was just so stuck on that timeline. And so I knew the average 1s statistics lets us know that the average person takes three to nine years to complete a doctorate degree. And so I just had to really dig deep and ask myself, am I committed to the time that it's going to take? 2s And then once I said yes to that, I also had to say we're going to take the timeline off. I don't care how long it's going to take me to complete it, I'm just going to do it. So my second tip for you is to not put the extra pressure on yourself with timelines. A lot of the times we don't even enjoy our journey because we're so focused on the time. Society has us believing that we have to accomplish things in this many years or this many months or whatever the case is. And that's not true. The only thing that we have to do is finish. The main goal is to finish. And when people get doctorate degrees, it doesn't even say how long it took you to complete it on the diploma. It doesn't. It just says that you earned a diploma. And so it's so funny because we focus so much on the time frame that we miss the journey of the growth, we missed the journey of how we're finding our inner strength, we missed a journey of how we're learning so much and we're growing in so many areas. And so I just encourage you take the timeline off. Take the timeline off and just enjoy your journey. The third thing that I had to do was I had to go back to the basics and I had to really remember 1s what I was doing prior to pursuing the degree. Because God told me many years ago what school to go to. But I met someone and I allowed them to change the trajectory of my destiny. Basically I allowed them to persuade me to go to a different school. And so hindsight, that's why I had so many issues and problems because although I was doing what God told me to do, I was doing it at the wrong place. So my third tip to you is seek God for instruction and guidance. A lot of the times we hear a prophetic word and we immediately act on it and we fail to get the complete instructions. We fail to get the who, what, when, where and how from God. And so a lot of the times we prematurely move out and we find ourselves in cycles of failure or we find ourselves in cycles of frustration simply because we did not get the blueprint from our father. And so I just want to encourage you guys to one, remember your why. Two, take the time limits off and three, seek clarity and instructions from God. Because if you do all three of those things, I can assure you that regardless of what happened, it doesn't matter. You will be able to overcome it. So again, thank you guys so much for joining me for Make It Happen Monday. And so now I challenge you, if you have had any setbacks, if you have had any delays, if you have had something that just knocked the breath out of you, I encourage you to pick it back up today and to make it happen because you can do it. If I can do it, you can do it. I am no better than you. I am just a simple woman that dug deep to find her strength to be able to make it happen. Thank you for tuning in to this segment of Make It Happen Monday. I challenge you to share this episode with your family and friends so that they too, can make it happen. For more information about your host, visit www.brooksdemming.com