How well do you handle setbacks? Take our quiz and find out
It's pretty stressful when things don't go to plan, but if we work on our resilience we can be better equipped to cope with life's ups and downs.
Changing your attitude can have a big impact on how well you handle stressful situations too.
Read on to discover some tips for handling setbacks and disappointment and take our setback quiz.
How to be more resilient
By working on our resilience, we can learn to let go of the stress and anxiety that accompanies disappointment and move on with our lives.
Sometimes it can feel as though the smallest setbacks are too much for us to cope with and that we can't bounce back from our problems.
For example, if you spend a lot of time completing a task and then your boss responds with lots of amends, it can be easy to feel disheartened and disappointed.
But it can help to look at the situation a different way: is your boss really being critical or simply changing things to suit their own taste? Is the criticism personal or constructive?
Sometimes we can take things to heart and allow them to stay in our minds longer than we should, instead of accepting the situation isn't as bad as it seemed at first and moving on.
There are a few ways to build resilience. You can start by learning to be more assertive, which will help you to deal with difficult situations. Mind Tools has some great tips on how to be assertive.
It can also help to look at balance in your life – is there one area that dominates everything else? Do you spend too much time focused on work?
Try to step back and give more attention to other areas of your life, such as friends and family or hobbies.
Another approach is to focus on mindful living and learn to accept that you won't be able to control every situation in your life. All you can do is face each new challenge as it arises.
How to cope with disappointment
When faced with disappointing news, it can be difficult to let go and move on with your life.
It can be tempting to shut out the world and spend time eating ice cream and watching boxsets (and that's okay!).
After a little while though, it can start to bring you down. It can be helpful to look back at the situation and think about how you can prevent the same problems from bringing you down.
Harriet Griffey has some great tips to help you learn the lessons of the past and let them go.
Take our setbacks quiz
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