Overcoming Setbacks

For all of you that follow me you are probably already aware & even if you're not, that I was completely financially and spiritually broke just a few years ago. I was down to my last $78 dollars and was 3 days away from my business closing and being bankrupt in 2013.

I was able to turn that situation around and last year my company made the coveted Inc. 5000 list. We were ranked 1276 out of 5,000 companies in the country for highest percentage growth. People now ask me "Hey man, how'd you turn it around and overcome those setbacks?"

I always want to give a simple one answer reply, so that its more memorable for the other person, and I always want to give someone advice that they can use, as people in my life have done for me. But the reality is, that the answer is a little more complex than that, only because it's different for everyone.

Here's what I mean by that, and here's what you can take away from my own setbacks. We all have different strengths and weaknesses. And what may be easy for you, can be hard for someone else.

I feel life at times seems to want to press your buttons and gives you problems that play to your weaknesses, and those problems are always your biggest setbacks.

There was no doubt that the things I had to overcome to be able to write this today were things that I didn't want to necessarily confront. I'd rather have buried my head in the sand, as we've all wanted to do at times.

You may be reading this article and going thru a setback of your own. If you are, the only advice I can give you is that the problems you're facing are playing to your weak points, or this wouldn't be a setback for you, would it? So the first thing you can do is just acknowledge that and grant yourself some beingness. The next thing you can do is to decide if you want to attack this thing or not, you always have a choice to flee, but then you'll just end up in the soup sooner or later. The way out is the way through.

You have to attack it, and here's the best part. Even if you don't fully come out of it, you'll be so much further ahead than if you ran from it.

Because the people that run from their problems, end up nowhere. And then they end up so low, that they just criticize you for trying to attack it.

So be Persistent, Courageous, Defiant, Resilient and just simply Endure. Because it's the Endurance which is defined by Webster as "the fact or power of enduring an unpleasant or difficult process or situation without giving way." Pay attention to "without giving way" meaning the person never goes down, he simply endures.

Life is tough...you really do have to be a Tiger. I hope this helps.

Go get it,

Vick Tipnes

American Entrepreneur