What to do when you’re not getting the results you want.
Back when I was a competitive figure skater I was a few weeks out from a big competition. As I was preparing and doing run throughs of my programs in the weeks leading up to the competition things were not going well. I was messing up on elements that were normally very easy for me. I could feel the confidence leaving my body with every element that I missed. I remember leaving the practice facility one day feeling completely defeated and I remembered saying to my coach, “nothing is working, I should just withdraw.”
Maybe you’ve felt similarly to this before at work, in relationships, or in whatever project or goal you’re working on that feels super important.
There’s no way to sugar coat it, this feeling of defeat and “nothing is working” feels like the absolute worst.
This feeling that nothing was working, no matter how hard I tried landed me in a funk of hopeless doom and gloom. Everytime I stepped back onto the ice to prepare for the competition it felt like I was bracing myself for the worst. I basically just stopped trying.
Fast forward to the competition. After weeks of a super crappy and defeated mindset my performance was lackluster. Shocking, right? I left the competition feeling validated thinking “see, I knew it was going to be a disaster.”
I had created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe you’ve done this too.
I created my result of a lack-luster performance because I was only looking at the evidence of what wasn’t working. I basically meditated on all the things that weren’t working because those thoughts were all consuming. My thoughts ping ponged from “why isn’t this working” to “I need to be more focused” and “I should try harder” etc.
All of those thoughts were and are super normal. Our brains are designed to keep us safe and solve problems. However despite my brain's best efforts to help me, it was working overtime helping in all the wrong ways.
What to do when things aren’t “working.”
If I could go back in time and change how I reacted to and thought about my situation and circumstances leading up to the competitions here are some things I would do differently:
I would acknowledge that based on outward appearances nothing seemed to be clicking and it felt really crappy.
I’d take 10-15 minutes to wallow in my negative, hopeless, defeated feelings. Really give them some quality air-time but only for a small amount of time.
Then I’d shift focus. I would look for evidence that something was working.
Was my stamina on point?
Was I present in my performance?
Did I land at least 1/3rd of my jumps?
Had my program run throughs improved in any way since last week?
Then I’d focus on what I could control…the things that were already working. I’d celebrate the heck out of them and the next time I was doing a program run through I’d focus on emphasizing those things, making sure they got the attention they deserved.
You may be thinking “Nicole, isn’t that just denial?”
I would counter you with tip #1, I would still validate the circumstances and how I felt. I just wouldn’t let my circumstances and feelings be the only information I brought to the table.
There’s an old journalism saying of “if it bleeds it leads” meaning the gnarly, dramatic stories always make the front page. Your brain will try to tell you that the front page story is that “Nothing is working. It’s time to panic and retreat to safety.” In reality there’s always more to that story. While your brain's default is to keep you safe, you can train your brain to look for the other side of the coin and change the leading headline from “nothings working” to “something is working.”
When you shift your mindset in this way it changes your outlook and energy. When those change, your circumstances are bound to change.