Indestructible Self-Belief
Module 5: Recover Faster

Donald Trump

On the other side of the Atlantic, Donald Trump is one of America’s most high profile and successful property developers, and the star of ‘The Apprentice’, the smash hit US reality series. His business career has seen more highs and more lows than most but what drove him on after the 1990 property crash in which he lost millions was his philosophy that you never give up.

‘I’m not a quitter,’ he says. ‘So I just kept going and came back. My two most important rules on how to become successful are that you have to enjoy what you’re doing, because if you don’t you’ll never be successful. And number two is that you can never give up or quit.

‘If there is a concrete wall ahead of you, you have to go through it. I know many people who are brilliant but they’re not successful. I know others who are not nearly as smart, but they are great success stories because they never give up.’

Success & failure

The dotcom fever in the 1990s was a classic example of how success and failure can be inextricably linked. At one point, the computer boom was creating 64 millionaires every day, many of them based in California’s Silicon  Valley.

The inevitable crash saw their new-found riches evaporate, and for some, the fallout was devastating. They were the ones who’d made it personal, who built their self-esteem on their new fortunes. The more they identified with their wealth, the more the change had a severe psychological impact on them.

But interestingly, most of the young internet entrepreneurs refused to allow failure to define their lives. To get to the top in the first place, they needed unshakable self-belief, and this remained intact, regardless of their bank balance.

For them, the future was what mattered, the next big idea, the next money making scheme. Some even put their experiences to use by giving speeches about them at other company conferences!

Now an important lesson has been learned. Failure is looked on as something to learn from and apply in future businesses, and, if a firm isn’t viable, it’s closed down quickly and the people regroup and start again.

Life tests you

Holding on to your self-belief is easy when things are going well. It’s when the going gets tough that you have to watch out. Handling yourself well in turmoil is vital if you are to live an interesting life.

Life will definitely take it out of you. Every one of us will have our fair share of testing, defeats, disappointments, criticism, and even condemnation. No one gets a totally easy life. The question is – how do you handle it?

First, realise that failure need not be the end of your dreams. Never see failure as a defeat or something that marks you permanently. Instead, develop what psychologists call a ‘rebound personality’. Rebound personalities are renewed, even inspired, by failure.

Strong foundation

You’re much better placed to handle challenges if you’re already operating from a strong foundation of self-belief. Without that solid bedrock underpinning you, challenges will knock you harder than they should. You’ll be thrown off course too easily, undermined at the first hurdle.

All the attention that you’ve been paying to your foundations over the past few weeks has been invaluable, but what about a really big knock? What do you do when your very foundation is shaken?

You need to know how to put yourself back together again. You need to be able to dig deeper into yourself to emerge stronger, clearer and better than ever.

Understand: a crisis will never leave you where it finds you. You’ll be weakened or strengthened by it. It’s entirely down to you.

It’s not what happens that poses the greatest threat – it’s your interpretation of it. Remember, your greatest ally or most powerful enemy is one and the same person – you.

There’s no-one better positioned than you to do maximum damage to yourself. When life is at its toughest, you can turn the gun on yourself – often called shooting yourself in the foot!

Or you can rise up to your full powers, get into the right frame of mind and resolve not to be beaten, least of all by yourself.

Whether you acknowledge it or not, a crisis always hands you this choice.

Life’s survivors

Liza Minnelli was never going to have a humdrum life. As a baby, her first visitor was Frank Sinatra, while her mother Judy Garland battled her own demons until dying when Liza was 23. Not only has Liza had more highs and lows than most, they’ve all been played out in public.

An Oscar in her 20s for her brilliant portrayal of Sally Bowles in Cabaret, packed out concert halls, drug abuse… they were all well documented, but fans were shocked when she appeared grossly overweight in a wheelchair. But within a year, she’d lost an incredible six stone, and had bounced back in irrepressible style, marrying flamboyant producer David Guest in an OTT showbiz ceremony.

No one was particularly surprised when the marriage soon hit the rocks, but after a journalist commented she’d had a lot of problems, she replied, ‘Haven’t you?’ The point is everyone has problems; it’s how we deal with them that counts.

Competitive world

The glossy magazine world is notoriously competitive, but one woman who carved her way to the very top is Mandi Norwood. This famously ambitious journalist fulfilled her dream of editing her own title by the time she was 25, moving on to become editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan for five years until moving to New York to take on the job of turning around the ailing Mademoiselle magazine.

When sales failed to pick up, owners Conde Nast folded the magazine and Mandi was left out of a job for the first time in nearly 20 years.

She could’ve slunk back home with her tail between her legs, but that’s not her style. Instead, she stayed put, and bounced back in style, writing the best-selling book Sex and the Married Woman, inspired by the confessions of her girlfriends.

Her failure to make a success of Mademoiselle left the high profile media star open to sniping, but she didn’t let that dim her ambition. ‘Yes, I am ambitious,’ she says, ‘but I’m surprised it’s worthy of note. I’m from Thatcher’s generation – ambition was bred into you.’

Mandi says she never ever considered returning to London. ‘That’s not how I operate. I like to take control of my own destiny. I don’t like circumstance driving the pattern of my life. I didn’t want to feel defeated.  My mother always said: “Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do this or that.” You get an opportunity, you grit your teeth and, who knows, it might come off.’

Overcoming tragedy

When the Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown and his wife lost their first born baby at just 10 days old, he said the tragedy served to remind he and his wife Sarah of the importance of using his time to make a difference.

‘Jennifer’s death has made us more determined to do things that are right,’ he said. ‘Jennifer is an inspiration to us. We have thought about what is important, and you have to use your time.’

Let go of fear

In their book ‘Life Lessons: How Our Mortality Can Teach Us About Life And Living’ authors Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler talk about the lessons they learnt through their work with the dying and those who have survived life-threatening illnesses.

And the most important lesson from those that have looked death in the eye? To let go of fear.

‘So much is possible when fear no longer holds us captive. To transcend fear, we have to practice. If you tackle your secret passions, you will not face regrets of a life half lived. We all have our dreams. But, sadly, we are also filled with reasons why we shouldn’t fulfil them. Life is over sooner than we think.’

Authenticity

Deep inside us, there is someone we were meant to be. But, too often, we define ourselves by our circumstances  and feel great only if things are going well.

If life goes badly, we feel worthless or look to other things or people, such as loved ones or the ‘perfect’ job, to define us and prop up our self esteem. We take on certain roles because they are lucrative yet once we achieve them we feel empty.

We discover our true identities by finding out what we want – and do not want – to do. This means we have a right to acknowledge what we enjoy, right down to our job and the clothes we wear, and not allow ourselves to do something because someone thinks it’s our role.

Optimism

Nigella Lawson, the seductive chef whose best-selling books and TV series have made her one of the most famous women in Britain, credits her late husband John Diamond with much of her success by boosting her self-confidence. He constantly told her, ‘you can, you can, you can,’ recalls her sister Horatia.

‘John was an optimist,’ concurs Nigella. ‘The world was his reward.’ So when he was struck dumb by cancer of the neck and tongue, the most important voice in her life was silenced. ‘That’s how I began talking more. Just because I had to talk for him, because no one could understand him.’ John Diamond died in 2001, just as Nigella’s career was taking off.

Laurie Anderson, the influential American musician and performance artist is in her 50s now, but still remembers vividly the time when she was a child of seven and taking care of her three-year-old twin brothers when they fell into a frozen lake.

With no adults around, Laurie dived into the icy water to rescue them, put one under each arm, and raced home, saving both their lives. The accident could so easily have had tragic consequences, and she worried that she might be blamed for putting her brothers in danger.

But her family simply praised her for her quick thinking. ‘That episode was the first time I saw how a terrible failure could be a kind of success, and that maybe they weren’t so far away from each other.’

Overcoming disaster

In 1999, the Scottish mountaineer, Jamie Andrew, lost both his hands and feet to frostbite after being trapped by a freak storm in the French Alps for five days and nights. The 28-year-old watched, helpless, as his best friend Jamie Fisher died beside him.

Lying in hospital, being spoon fed by nurses, he could have let this terrible ordeal destroy his life, but Jamie’s indomitable spirit won through. ‘After what happened, I quickly realised that everything my life had been built on before was now invalid, except for my relationships with my friends and family,’ he wrote.

‘All my hopes and dreams and intentions, every plan I had ever made, was written off. But you’ve got to fill your head with new plans, new dreams. Even in hospital I started planning first of all that I would learn to feed myself. That I would be able to get out of bed, to walk, to take care of myself, to go back home and live with my girlfriend Anna again. Dreams that were every bit as challenging and fulfilling as my ambitions were before.’

Failure was never an option and Jamie astonished doctors with his determination and, staying true to his vow that he would climb again, within a year he had achieved the unthinkable and climbed Ben Nevis on his new artificial legs.

Five years later he has taken up mountaineering and rock climbing again, as well as skiing, and even completed the London Marathon. He married Anna, and now has had a baby daughter, Iris. ‘I don’t like to be held back by things,’ he says.

When the going gets tough, you need to think fast, regroup and recover.

You need a strategy, a back-up plan. This is it:

RECOVER FASTER

1. Wake up

However unpleasant or gruesome, grasp the problem. Avoiding it, burying it always makes it worse. Don’t let things fester. Front up. Admit what’s really going on. The energy that you’re using to resist the issue could be far better employed handling it.

2. Don’t undermine yourself

If you’ve made mistakes, seriously got things wrong, get the lesson – fast. I mean, really get it. Otherwise you’ll repeat it until you do. Get it and then, get over it.

Your entire focus and attention needs to be focused outwards, not inwards, action orientated, not spent picking at yourself.

At a time like this you could do colossal damage to yourself that could be exceedingly difficult and time consuming to repair later. If you catch yourself beginning to inflict damage, stop it immediately.

3. Refuse to be beaten

Defeat is not an option, whatever the outcome. Your handling of the crisis allows you to feel victorious.

Knowing that you rose to the occasion, did everything you could, applied every ounce of ingenuity and resourcefulness that you could muster, and then some, lets you look yourself in the eye.

4. Embrace failure

You must fail in order to succeed. Fear of failure is the real demon. Look at any powerful man or woman who has achieved success and you’ll find failure.

It’s the risk one takes the price you sometimes pay for an ambitious life. Above all, don’t take failure personally. You are not a failure. However badly things have gone, get this – failure is not the worst thing ever, never trying in the first place is.

5. Watch your interpretation

When all’s said and done, check yourself over. Is there any internal bleeding, any oozing wounds that could destroy, or seriously delay a full recovery?

Give yourself a thorough once-over. You’re looking for changes to your sense of identity, how you feel about yourself, now, after the event, and for the future. Be very, very careful to clear up and thoroughly deal with anything that might linger, fester, and poison. Ensure that you’re able to return to your life and build a future for yourself with all your faculties entirely restored and intact.

Otherwise, you run the risk of joining the ranks of the walking wounded those who were tested and shrank, living in terror or those who found their efforts wanting.

Winston Churchill himself said this, “A successful person is somebody who goes from one failure to another without any loss of enthusiasm.”

Make sure that’s you!

Actions of the Week

1. Speed up your recovery

Even on everyday things, pay attention and handle upsets quickly. As soon as you notice you’re making heavy weather of something, stop. Resolve the matter satisfactorily and move on.

2. Run a check

Scan yourself to spot any lingering limitations, ongoing slights that you may be carrying within yourself. By all means, make connections between then and now, the event, circumstances that you have used to undermine you.

3. Let it go

You may well have acted less than brilliantly, on reflection. Grasp this and all the stark lessons. Then, let it go. Make your peace – with yourself. Otherwise, you’re set on course to undermine yourself from hereon in.

4. Handle criticism

Sometimes other people have a point. If you feel you need to make amends, do so. By all means, delve into yourself with interesting questions. But, do move on. Seal yourself up. Don’t allow your power to gush out of you in recrimination. Constant picking and haemorrhaging is not healthy for anyone.

5. Don’t dumb down

Check whether you’ve resigned yourself to smaller aspirations, more modest ambitions, based on your experience, or your interpretation of those experiences. Dust yourself down. Wash off that experience and get ready to move on.

The future belongs to those who believe in the possibility of their dreams. Have a great week,