One of the most frustrating, yet most satisfying things that I do is golf. There is no greater feeling than hitting a pure 9-iron from 150 yards out to within 10 feet of the green.

However, golf causes me an equal amount of frustration. The slightest one-degree shift of the placement of your club could be the difference between the middle of the fairway and being out of bounds. Over the last six to eight months, I have put in a lot of time both at the driving range and on the golf course – more time than I ever have - and it has definitely paid off, as I have seen my golf handicap drop about eight strokes.
However, the last few times I have gone to play I have not gone so great. Whereas I was shooting low-mid 80s during a round of 18 holes, I started shooting closer 100. I began questioning myself, “What’s going on? Why am I getting worse?” and, “This is so dumb; why even play?”
Has this situation ever happened to you: things are going well, you are showing improvement, then suddenly, you fall back to your original baseline or you start to under-perform? It happens to the best of us and, often times, we view ourselves as not good enough. While it is frustrating not to perform well, if the goal is to maintain progress and continue development, you must learn how to interpret these setbacks effectively and reflect on the overall growth that has taken place.
The Brain’s Default Mode
Let’s say I were to either give you $200 right now or take $200 from you right now, which one do you think you are more likely to remember a week from now? If you said taking $200 from you, you would be correct, but why? The fact is that negative experiences, such as losing something, sting more and are more intense; therefore, that memory is more likely to stick.
Negative experiences are also more noticeable. If you look back at grade school, when you received a good grade on a test, you usually get the “Nice job” remark on your paper. If you did poorly on a test, that paper is littered with comments and remarks about why you were wrong and how to fix it.
But how does this impact your thinking? It starts with how the brain is set up. If you think of any type of technology (phone, laptop, television), it comes set up with its default settings, which you then adjust based on your needs and preferences.
Well, your brain works the same way, and has what is called the default mode network. Researchers did a memory task with participants, and they noticed that when doing the task, brain regions related to motivation and information processing were highly active. However, when the brain was at rest, the brain regions in charge of memory and emotion were highly active. When asking the participants what was going on, they described as having more self-directed thoughts. Also interesting was that this same region was active when participants made a mistake.
What this research shows is that it is natural for us to be hard on ourselves. However, for a lot of people, this sort of thinking does not set you up for future success. Therefore, you must train your brain into adjusting what its default mode network is.
How to: Making the Mindset Shift
Restructuring the default thinking pattern of your brain will not happen overnight, but there are a few things that you can do that will help create a new default. First, you can always start by taking a few deep breaths.
This does two things: activates the rest-and-digest portion of your stress response and focuses on something happening in the present moment. Often times, self-focused thoughts may raise your heart rate, so your breath can lower it, or at the very least, manage it effectively. With stress, the mind tends to live in the future or in the past, so your breath can get you back to the present moment and what is happening right now.
Another strategy is to reflect on how you view these setbacks. Theory tells us how you view your successes and failures matters and impacts long-term confidence, effort, and motivation. Explanatory styles look at the degree to which you attribute an event to internal or external sources: are the characteristics considered to be stable or unstable over time, and the global versus specific impact.
Those who associate failures and setbacks as a direct reflection to them as a person, as something that will continue to happen, and that they are going to fail in other domains are less likely to make the necessary changes to improve than someone who views the situation is just the opposite.
Instead, view these failures and setbacks not as a true representation of who you are, as a one-time thing, and that it only impacts this one event and you will be much better off.
You can also practice acceptance. Acceptance is often misunderstood as it is believed that accepting failure means that you are okay with performing at a substandard level. This is not the case because acceptance does not mean being happy about failure, but being able to accept those situations for what they are, which allows you to move on more effectively to whatever is next. You cannot change the past, and you cannot predict the future, but you can identify what you need to do in the moment to improve your skills.
Finally, remind yourself of where you started and the progress you have made up at this point. Failure is not fun, there is no denying that, but just because you failed does not take away all the progress you have made. This may help you maintain a level of confidence to push forward, may spark some positive emotion, and may lead to a more optimistic approach so that things can get better.
Final thoughts
Not everything is going to go as planned. Not everything is going to be perfect. You are going to face struggles and setbacks along your journey to mastery. While experiencing any type of setback can be frustrating, it does not have to mean that you have lost everything. Use these moments as a learning experience, acknowledge that you can do better, then redirect your focus on doing just that: getting better.
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