It’s something that has amazed and perplexed me:

How can business owners who are so capable, engaging and even successful in other areas of their life, fall down when it comes to creating their first six-figure breakthrough?

While there are many reasons – the one I’m seeing repeatedly is the rabbit hole they go down when things go south.

When you business is a personal reflection of you – what you’re excited about, the difference you want to make, or even has your name on the door – its easy to make temporary failure about you.

The problem is, that’s the worst thing you can do.

Becausue it leads you – with all your attributes, talents and abilities – into a tailspin that’s hard to recover from.

Which is why I wanted to offer you three things you can do to turn that heartbreak into your big break. Even when it looks like there is no way out.

• You tear yourself down when things aren’t going like you want them to.
• Disappointments set off a descending spiral of struggle that’s hard to break out of. Even though you know what you do has tremendous value.
• You want to find a way to deal with setbacks that actually builds your revenue, but you don’t have a clue what that might be.

The first and most important step is to separate what you did from who you are.

Errors aren’t final.

And getting lost in self-pity is like beating yourself up because you jumped into an empty pool and didn’t get wet.

Instead of simply finding another pool filled with water to jump in.

Yes, you may have blown it. But that action doesn’t alter your essential value. It just means you have to offer that value in a way people connect with and invest in.

Too often we fall into this cycle by trying to get strokes from our business that are better sourced outside of business:  Love, appreciation, recognition, acceptance.

So failure feels personal.

When you can seperate the mistake from your value, you can stop searching for some deep character flaw you believe is causing the struggle.

And discover a different action you can take or a correction you can make that puts your struggle behind you.

I’m reminded of a webinar I did years ago that tanked.

I was really disappointed because every webinar I did before then had been successful. The failure came out of the blue, and I found myself crushed and confused for about 30 minutes.

“I did everything right. It was something people wanted. I had a good sign-up for the webinar. The offer was killer.”

But then another emotion took over that surprised me.

And I said the sentence that turned everything around:

This wasn’t arrogance. I was honestly mystified.

But as soon as I assumed the positive (this should have worked!), my sense of despair dissolved. And was replaced by an intense yearning to discover the reason.

Which I did in about 10 minutes.

This wasn’t about a personal shortcoming that would take forever to work through. But a mystery to be solved. Which I did in less time than it takes to whip up a good lunch.

And it’s the shift so many entrepreneurs miss. Which is why their apparent failures seem to stack up, instead of being solved.

This isn’t about pumping yourself up with a personal pep talk. But knowing you have everything you need to make it work.

So you can find the reason it didn’t.

Too many people just want a quick fix.

“Just give me the script  / template / cheat sheet / short cut,” they say.

Now I love me a good script, template, cheat sheet or short cut. But they’re only a start.

Because business doesn’t happen in a Petri dish.

There’s always a curve, surprise or possibility that doesn’t fit your carefully thought out plan.

When you know WHY the template works, you can seamlessly and successfully improvise, and go off script when things don’t conform to your expectations.

And more importantly:  You can make it work in your OWN way.

If you look at business owners that are truly successful, they’ve taken a successful formula and made it their own.

And when you do this repeatedly, your belief in yourself snowballs.

A series of successful outcomes  =  Confidence.

Confidence  =  Your ability to forge through failures, instead of stop.

Your ability to forge through failures without stopping  =  A business where your revenue continually exceeds your expectations.

We only got there when our Plan A wasn’t working out. And we didn’t want another Plan A to replace it.

Or we had a creative idea that wouldn’t let us sleep at night until we made it real.

Of course, the temptation to allow unexpected lows and disappointments to drag us down can be powerful.

But you do have a choice:  To build a story of personal inadequacy. Or a story of personal triumph.

This isn’t about pumping yourself up. Or slapping inspirational post-it notes up on the fridge.

Its about taking a step back and a breath in, so you can discover what you need to do to actually move forward.