How do you manage a downturn?

The hardest hurdles in life to overcome are those that come during times that already have you on your heels. Managing those downturns successfully can be the difference between success and failure; victory and defeat.

Picture Credit: New Year’s Eve Lantern Lighting in Ningbo, ZH, PRC.

When working against the odds, as many of us find ourselves doing in the current day and age, it’s very important never to lose sight of our goals, even when they seem out of immediate reach. There will always be days that feel hopeless, whether you can identify a specific trigger for these feelings or not. As is so often repeated in the marketing industry, each good experience may cause a customer to return once, but one bad experience causes each customer never to return. As the ultimate arbiter of your personal life experience, it’s up to you to curate that experience carefully to keep yourself moving forward.

Don’t let the bad things beat you

Make a promise to yourself, here and now: Refuse to allow yourself to be beaten. It’s possible that you may run into situations that hamper your progress, or take you out of the fight for a while; that’s natural, and situations do happen. Nevertheless, you must be relentless in your approach to success. Your refusal to give in today may be the precursor to your ultimate success tomorrow.

This is not to say that you should proceed recklessly. You, as a person, have the judgment needed to handle your challenges responsibly. Challenge the obstacles in your path from different angles. Be patient and use discretion, especially when discretion seems the farthest from your mind. Challenging yourself in this way is how you grow and improve as a person, and what seems like adversity today will metamorphose into the routine maintenance of tomorrow.

Refuse to settle for less than your best

This approach is twofold: Give everything you have to what you pursue day-to-day, and don’t accept anything less than you deserve when you throw in your all.

Primarily, giving your best requires you to play to your strengths. Finding work that you are good at and enjoy isn’t just about having a good time on the job; repeated studies show that happier workers perform better at work. You owe it to yourself and the people you serve to do so in ways that work for you. If that means you need to quit a job where the work itself holds you back, then plan ahead, make a switch, and follow through on your commitment to yourself and society: you serve the community to the best of your ability, and in return, society takes care of you.

Conversely, you must also pledge not to take lightly when you are mistreated. Anyone that asks you to put forth your best face: at work, at home, in your social life; the where is immaterial, what matters is that they create an environment that encourages you to be at your best. One of the worst things you can do for yourself is to get comfortable with familiar misery. Low pay and long hours are meant to exhaust you into complicit loyalty to your employer, but hard work and the right amount of luck can break that cycle.

When you have fostered an environment where you can be at your best, people around you will respond. You can serve customers better, engage with clients, care for your loved ones, and be more confident in your self-worth.

Don’t be afraid to sow where others see barren land

Giving up on yourself, whether due to external stimuli or internal fatigue, or a combination thereof, is the worst thing you can do. It takes work to convince yourself that you deserve happiness, and there are people who will deny you that opportunity. Remember that happiness is not a zero-sum game, and you do not have to destroy others’ happiness to take it for yourself. Even when you feel you do not deserve happiness of your own accord, remember your essentially humanity, and take the lead in generating your own happiness.

Creating success for yourself requires you to set being happy as your goal, and to hold yourself accountable when you realize you are acting against that goal. Don’t settle for less than your best, and don’t settle for anything less than happiness. When you see yourself acting in a way that doesn’t support that mission, change that behavior. If that behavior resists change, then re-evaluate your direction. Follow through and pursue your ultimate directives, and, with a little luck, even the downturns will turn around.