If someone falls down and then gets back up, it’s a comedy. If someone falls and doesn’t get up, it’s a tragedy. Life is a mix of both, but wouldn’t you prefer your life to be a comedy, not a tragedy?
Ponder this for a moment.
We all fall; someone or something knocks us down, or life charges at us like a steam train and throws us off the rails. It’s never a matter of falling because everyone does. It’s about getting back up.
Welcome to my Dr. Phil Ted talk.
But how do we keep getting back up? Many times, when you’re figuratively lying on the pavement, battered and bruised, the last thing you want to do is get back up. Cause you know life is waiting with a clenched fist, ready to knock you down… again.
Here’s how I keep getting up one more time.
Keep Getting Back Up
“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
Winston Churchill
Good quote, but how does it help? It helps because it leaves two clues for getting back up. Can you guess what they are? Failure is not fatal, and the courage to continue. Let’s explore this further below, but first…..
Improve Your Mobility
When you fall, trip, or are pushed over, it helps you to have decent mobility to get up without throwing anything out. There are a ton of great mobility exercises out there, but you need one that touches the whole body. Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce the Turkish Get Up.
It’s a strange way to get up and down from the ground, but it trains your body as one piece. Pretty helpful for when you find yourself on the ground.
Here is how you do it.
1. Lying on your back, put your right foot on the ground, slide your left leg out at 45 degrees, and do the same for your left arm.
2. Raise your right arm above your shoulder and open your palm.
3. Push your left shoulder into the ground and roll to your left side, raising your right hip and pushing your left elbow down to get up.
4. Straighten your left arm and sweep your left leg underneath you until you’re in a half-kneeling position.
5. Push your right foot through the floor to stand up.
6. Do the reverse to return to the starting position.
Hard, yes, but next time you find yourself on the ground, this drill will help you pop up.
Support Network
Life is better with friends and even better if those friends are helpers.
A while back, I was pissed when an ice storm took down my shed roof. Not being a fix-it person, I had little idea of what to do and where to start. Lucky for me, a former client and friend knew his way around wood and tools and helped fix my roof.
It was hard work that he could’ve avoided, but he stepped up to the plate.
When life knocks you flat on your butt, it helps to have a friend who reaches out their hand to help. Asking for help is not easy, and that’s where the next factor comes in.
Courage
Courage is the ability to do something that frightens you. You feel butterflies in your belly, your pulse and heartbeat quicken, and sweat beads on your forehead. Some feel that asking for help is a sign of weakness. What, you cannot do it yourself? How silly are you? You should know how to do everything.
An extreme sentence to prove a point. I, not knowing how to fix a thing, means battling the urge not to ask, and asking anyway. What’s the worst thing someone can say?
No. But if it’s a good friend, the most likely answer is yes.
Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness. The courage it takes to ask makes it a strength.
Hire A Coach
I often get in my own way to the point that I’ve found myself kicking and screaming on the pavement from self-inflicted wounds. But when you’re an adult, and your parents are not there to save you, you need to save yourself.
There are two occasions when I hired a coach to pick me up. One was physical, a Physical Therapist, and the other was mental, a Therapist. If you find yourself in a physically or mentally tough spot, I recommend hiring a coach to help pick you up.
You don’t have to fight every battle on your own.
Mindset Switch
Mindset is the established set of attitudes held up top in that big brain of yours. So, when you tell your big brain that life punched you in the mouth one too many times, and you don’t want to get back up, what happens?
You don’t get up.
But when you tell your brain that failure is not fatal, that it’s only feedback, and that it could be way worse than your current situation, guess what happens? That little bit of positive self-talk will help shift your negative mindset.
Then you will get up one more time.
Wrapping Up
Getting up one more time after being knocked down is difficult but necessary. But with a bit of help from your friends and some positive self-talk, getting back up will be easier.
It’s worked for me, and I hope it will work for you too.
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