Life could be described as being something of a rollercoaster. There are ups and there are downs. This is to be expected. The same is true of your fitness journey and so if you want to succeed long term you need to learn to overcome disappointment when it occurs and forge on. These top tips will help with that.
Give Yourself a Moment to Be Disappointed.
It’s ok to try and be someone who forces their way through negative situations, to put a brave face on things and keep ploughing on however not dealing with negativity when it crops up isn’t healthy either. Give yourself time to recognise your disappointment (it might be that you didn’t meet a specific goal, perhaps that you have had a setback due to injury or maybe didn’t qualify for an event), to process it and recognise it for what it is. THEN you will be in a better place and able to start looking past it.
How Bad is it?
Disappointments are not great however sometimes it pays to pause and think about how bad the issue actually is or was. Humans seem to have a natural ability to amplify or dramatise issues when they happen to themselves which can be understood when you have been working towards something important. With a little self-awareness, you can skip this step if you stop and consider how bad things really are, or rather whether they are actually as bad as first thought. Often you will find that actually, there’s a fairly easy way past whatever the issue is or you simply realise that things could have been worse. A little perspective goes a long way.
Let it Go
Embrace your inner Elsa (a terrible Frozen reference, sorry!) and let it go. Wallowing or refusing to let go of disappointment is not productive, fixes nothing and generally just makes you feel worse. If you’ve suffered a setback own it, understand it, feel what you feel and embrace that but let it go. Now is the time to move forward.
Get Back on the Horse
We’ve all heard the saying “get back on the horse” which basically means if you fall off, stand up, dust yourself off and climb back up, only this time change something slightly so you don’t fall again or at least stay on the horse longer next time. Once you let go of your disappointment and decide to be proactive you’ll find yourself feeling much better mentally as well as physically.
Plan and Succeed
If your disappointment is an injury that is holding you back, do something about that. Do your physio, talk to your PT about how to work out around your injury or plan for a proactive and positive transition back into training when you are healed. If you didn’t qualify or meet a goal you were determined to meet stop, think and realise that the way to stop this happening again is to make a change. Work out what you need to do in order to get past the disappointment and move forward.
In Summary
As disappointing as this might sound, disappointment is part and parcel of life, and certainly part of training. It tests you and threatens to pull you down however with some forward thinking it’s entirely possible to take your negative, your disappointment and actually use it to do better than before. If you can overcome disappointment and move forward, you will have built yourself a strong base for future success.