By: Joshua Finley
We all face adversity in one form or another as we work toward our goals. The real question is not whether we’ll have to overcome obstacles on the road to success, but what we’ll do when we’re faced with them.
While everyone’s path takes its own shape, with its own unique obstacles, people who overcome adversity tend to do certain things well. If you’re looking ahead to your own personal journey, learn from others who’ve achieved in spite of the odds and employ these six time-tested strategies.
Have a 10-Year Plan
The standard advice for early-career professionals is to have a five-year career plan. Five years is a long time, to be sure, but limiting yourself to five-year plans means developing seven, eight, nine or more over the course of your working life.
That sounds tiring. More importantly, five years might not be enough time to build momentum for some of the “structural” career goals you’ve set out for yourself. Ten years is a more sensible timeframe.
Find And Keep Reliable Mentors
One of the important things you can do early in your career is form a relationship with a mentor. Better yet, two mentors, or three, or maybe more. You’ll appreciate having a deep bench of more experienced sounding boards when the going gets tough. Understand, though, that it takes work to maintain mentor-mentee relationships; be prepared to hold up your end of the bargain.
Shore Up Your Personal Support Network
Crucial as reliable mentors are, a personal network made up solely of people you turn to for advice is a weak, one-dimensional network. A deeper, well-rounded network includes professional peers, former educators and counselors, friends, relatives, and others. Only you know how each person in your network can help you if and when you need it, but rest assured, you’ll want them all in your corner when the going gets tough.
Learn From the Mistakes of Others
No need to revel in others’ misfortune; cruelty serves no one. While never turning your back on a friend (or colleague) in need, make sure you learn from their mistakes as well. There’s no point in making the same mistake twice, even if the original misstep wasn’t yours.
Have Backup Plans
Resilient people tend to have contingency plans. Lots and lots of contingency plans. Because it’s rarely the case that Plan A comes off without a hitch. To build these backup plans into your longer-range career plans, consider where your assumptions might fail and what known or unknown unknowns could emerge to derail your progress.
Be Prepared to Fail
Successful people know how to cope with failure. Not because they’re prescient, but because they themselves have failed before (and probably will again). You can be optimistic and ambitious without being foolhardy — what matters is not whether you maintain a perfect track record but whether you recover from setbacks in due course.
It’s Never Easy
Making your own way in this world is not easy. Everyone, no matter how talented or lucky they are, experiences setbacks along the road to success (or failure).
It’s not realistic to expect otherwise. Yet if you take these lessons to heart, you might save yourself a great deal of heartache while increasing your chances of reaching your long-term goals.
The sooner you begin, the better. So, make a 10-year plan. Get some mentors in your corner and your family on board. Learn from others’ mistakes, however painful they might be. Have backup plans on backup plans. And know that you’re probably going to fail, at least temporarily.
Do all these things and you’ll have a decent chance of overcoming adversity as you work toward your goals. The rest is up to you.
Published by: Holy Minoza
