16.06.2023 Today’s Insights from Fast Company: How to Get (re-)Motivated after a Setback
Dear Students,
How many of you can honestly say that you’ve never experienced a setback in the process of pursuing your goals? Probably none. So, the key to staying motivated after finding yourself in this inevitable situation is to avoid creeping into a shell of disappointment, anger, frustration etc., all of which are certainly normal feelings, but which can impede your progress if they linger too long.
Nora Tobin, executive coach and health and wellness expert, reminds students like you in this Fast Company article that a level of structure (my term) will help us to figuratively “get up when we [feel we] have fallen” (my analogy). And the first step in that structure? To conduct self-reflection, which our MC program strongly encourages. At a very basic level, an ambitious international student like you who has had a perceived “failure” (which it’s not, really, but which may seem that way to some of you who may have been raised in environments where “less than perfection” was often not acceptable) ought to begin by re-affirming why you established your central goal in the first place.
Thereafter, it’s no surprise that putting in place an action plan is the next step. As Benjamin Franklin (or Winston Churchill, depending on whom you ask) put it, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” The core competencies to effective planning? Self-awareness, goal clarity, organizational skills, time management, courage to take initiative, and the willingness to reach out for additional support/guidance when necessary, all of which outstanding candidates like you receive through MC coaching sessions and our rich program curriculum. As Tobin highlights, a mindset shift away from rumination on what went wrong, to more positive thinking is critical, as well, which aligns with our coaches’ emphasis on perseverance and resilience, to ride out the (inevitable) waves in reaching your global leadership career objectives.
Along with her other valuable recommendations around limiting the number of goals an aspiring professional like you ought to undertake, Tobin highlights the value of consistency. As “Rome was not built in a day” (a saying credited to English playwright John Heywood), students like you who desire global business leadership roles will need to create personal systems to keep yourselves motivated, on a daily basis, to take the many progressive, small steps necessary to accomplish the “ambitious goals” Tobin references and recommends setting – and to which many of you aspire.
We wish you the best of success in achieving these!