How to See the Opportunity Around You (Even When You Feel Defeated)

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Life is about seeing the opportunity around you, stepping into the vision you have for yourself, and embracing the work it will take to get there. 

For me, stepping into the vision I have for myself hasn’t always been easy and there has been a ton of imposter syndrome along the way, but leading is about doing scary things and having faith in knowing you were created to do something amazing. 

One thing I know for sure is one bump in the road doesn’t define who you are, or the impact you are meant to have in the world. In fact, if you let it, one bump, or many bumps can inspire you to take the leap to do more with your life. I know this was the case for me. 

One of my major bumps in the road was when I filed for bankruptcy. I was a single mom and not in a financial place to handle everything that was coming my way. I remember leaving the courtroom after my bankruptcy hearing feeling ashamed and embarrassed, but I knew in my heart there was something more out there for me, I only needed to have the courage to go after it. 

It was then I decided to take a leap, bet on myself and move from Ohio to North Carolina with me, my son, our luggage, my last paycheck, and a rental car. I didn’t have a job, but I was willing to bet on myself and had faith the move would create a better life for us.  I was right. 

When you feel defeated, it is critical to see the opportunity and not let the moment define you, or your future.

1. First, it’s okay to feel the emotions that come with feeling defeated. 

It’s normal during tough situations to feel sad, angry, disappointed, embarrassed, frustrated. It’s important to take the time to acknowledge the emotion, so it can be dealt with accordingly. 

When I filed for bankruptcy, I felt ashamed, embarrassed, and irresponsible. I let myself feel all my emotions, I cried and talked it out. As I worked through my emotions, I began to forgive myself, which allowed me to move forward. 

2. Ask yourself, “What is the lesson I can learn from this?” 

As you face your situation, think about the lessons you can or have learned and how your situation can shape your life for the better. 

Thinking about the lessons I learned was a pivotal moment for me because I realized I needed to make more money and be wiser with my financial decisions around money. I needed to think bigger and rethink my career game plan. This big thinking ultimately is what changed my trajectory and situation creating a better life for me and my son. 

Which brings me to...

3. Think about the opportunity around you to change your circumstance. 

There are opportunities all around us. When you are open to seeing them, you create a whole new set of possibilities for yourself. You have to be able to look outside of yourself, your comfort zone, and be ready to be all in to do what it takes to change your situation.

When I moved from Ohio to North Carolina with no real guarantee anything would work out, this motivated me to apply for jobs outside of my original career field and utilize my full experience. I enhanced my education to help me move up the career ladder faster, I moved into upper management and was part of senior management teams in the C-suite.

 Within a few years, my skill set surpassed several of my colleagues and I became the go-to for troubled businesses that needed help with restructuring and streamlining. This experience ultimately is helping me to build my own seven-figure business and helping other entrepreneurs to do the same.    

4. Create an “I never want to be in this situation again” action plan and follow it. 

When life throws us challenges, it’s important to ask how you can not be in the situation again. Use the lessons you learned from Step 2. Think about the steps you need to take, break down those steps into micro-steps, and take real action to achieve your goals. Don’t delay.  

In my situation, after going through what I went through, my action plan was, and is, now to help me never struggle financially again and to make smart financial decisions for my and my family’s future.  

This has helped me to do brave things like start my business, continuously invest in my growth and development, travel the world, buy my home, become the breadwinner for my now blended family of four, and continue to keep doing big and scary things.     

Remember, life is meant to be lived, so it is never too late to step into the life you want to create and to go after more. 

“When you feel defeated, it is critical to see the opportunity and not let the moment define you, or your future.”

—Brandy Mabra, CEO of Savvy Clover Coaching & Consulting

About the Author: Brandy Mabra is the CEO of Savvy Clover Coaching & Consulting and a business and leadership coach. Brandy has 15 years of business management and leadership experience. She has worked in diverse business climates and has turned hot mess businesses into well oiled and profitable machines with engaged teams. Brandy has spent her career building million-dollar empires and now uses her million-dollar skill set to help herself and other women entrepreneurs to do the same. 

Brandy is the founder of Savvy Foundations, a CEO mastermind helping other women show up unapologetically savvy in their CEO role and build a healthy and sustainable business generating multiple-six and seven-figures. Because The CEO Skill Set is the Million Dollar Skill Set. Brandy loves to travel and spend time with her family, she believes you cannot build a business on fumes and CEO breaks are required. You can follow her on Instagram at @savvyclovercoaching.

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The Science Behind Intention-Setting, Plus 6 Ways How it Can Elevate Your Business Goals

As an entrepreneur, it is essential to set goals to achieve the results you desire. However, women often put so much pressure on themselves for achieving a certain milestone or metric in the form of a goal that goals can sometimes be counterproductive. Let me explain.

Goals can inadvertently make us feel like a failure. We either hit the $10k month or we didn't. Traditional goal-setting often plays into the black/white mentality that is so pervasive in our society. These types of goals don't leave a lot of room for all the beautiful colors in between where we may not have hit the exact goal we wanted but we succeeded in other ways. For example, maybe you didn't hit your goal of $10k this month but you set up 20 meetings with prospects that could lead to $30k next month. Getting down on yourself for not hitting your original goal of $10k could rob you of celebrating the 20 prospect meetings you worked hard to achieve that may even result in more revenue in the long run.

Intentions, on the other hand, are less shame-based and offer more opportunity to feel a sense of accomplishment. Or as I like to say, they leave more room for magic. Those little surprises that help us generate income or increase our influence in ways we didn't expect. For example, you might have the goal "book 5 clients this month" when in reality what you desire is to make money in a way that feels energizing and aligned. Maybe booking 5 clients will feel energizing and aligned but maybe there's a speaking opportunity for the same amount of money that would feel even more energizing and aligned. You don't want to be so focused on booking your 5 clients that you 1) book clients who aren't aligned and suck the life out of you or 2) miss that amazing speaking opportunity. It's a practice of detaching from the outcome and believing in the infinite possibilities that are available to us at any given time.

Intentions not only offer a more compassionate way to set goals but there have been studies that look at psi (a general way to describe types of communication or information transfer that defy common understanding of time and space), which suggest that conscious intention (e.g. thoughts and feelings) influences unconscious activity. In fact, our eyes receive and process 10 million bits of information per second but we only consciously engage with 16 of them. This means we are only aware of a fraction of the information that is at our fingertips. Part of our work is to learn how to expand our awareness through practices like meditation. The other part is to simply believe there is more than meets the eye.

Here are 6 ways to use intention-setting to elevate your business goals:

1. Create a vision board for your business - vision boards are all the rage these days and there's a reason why. Have you ever considered creating a vision board specifically for your business? It can be a fun way to uncover what you desire your business to look and feel like and where you want to focus your attention. Especially if you find yourself too much in your head, spending time to reconnect with your bigger mission through imagery can be incredibly rewarding. Let your imagination run wild.

2. Schedule a monthly intention-setting party - it can be fun to get together with your fellow lady bosses once a month and share your intentions with each other. You can ask each other questions like: Where do you desire to focus your energy? What was your biggest learning from the previous month? What do you hope to celebrate at the end of this month?

3. Outline your ideal day as CEO - as an entrepreneur, it is important to be clear on what your ideal day as CEO would look and feel like. Otherwise, we can get side-tracked from our bigger vision of life and business by spending our days responding to low-priority emails, scheduling meetings over meal times, and slipping back into old workaholic routines. Setting your own schedule is one of the greatest perks of being an entrepreneur so take time to make this happen. Ask yourself: How many hours do I want to work every day? What would my dream mornings look like? How often do I want to work out each week? When am I most productive? How important is it to practice daily self-care?

4. Choose a word of the week - intention-setting doesn't have to be overwhelming. It can be as simple as choosing a word of the week like "confidence", "focus", "trust", "joy", "visibility", or "play." This is a great way to stay committed to an intention without having to do anything too elaborate. Try writing your word in your journal, putting it on a sticky note on your computer, or creating a calendar reminder so you see it daily.

5. Claim your superpower - in the midst of trying to achieve goals, it is easy to focus on where you are falling short and forget how amazing you are. Take some time to remind yourself what you are truly gifted at. What is your superpower? Is it navigating difficult conversations? Is it getting people to view something differently? Is it your strong intuition? Is it your coding skills? In the fast pace of entrepreneur life, don't forget to celebrate all the ways that you are shining.

6. Visualize yourself in 5 years - taking a step back to imagine where you would like to be in 5 years can be a powerful exercise. This isn't about knowing all the answers but tapping into the essence of your big dreams. We can get so caught up in the day-to-day activities of running a business that we lose sight of where we want to go. Take a moment to close your eyes and picture yourself 5 years from this moment. Where are you? What are you doing? What is the impact you are making? Who is around you? How do you feel? What wisdom does your future self want your younger self to know?

To all of my fellow hustlers out there, don't let your business goals be a cause of stress or shame. Weave some intention-setting into your business strategy because it's not only a fun way to stay focused but science is telling us there is real power putting words to positive changes we wish to make in our life.

By: Elizabeth Su

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Elizabeth Su is a life coach and mindfulness expert who mentors high-achieving women around the world to unlock their potential, lean into joy, and live life to the fullest. I am currently pursuing my Masters in Clinical Psychology (concentration in Spirituality Mind Body) and an advanced certificate in Sexuality, Women, and Gender from Columbia University. I have been featured in numerous media outlets including OZY, Fatherly, Bustle, PopSugar, Elite Daily, and Thought Catalog for my work around marriage mindfulness, female empowerment, and navigating your own path to happiness.

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Are You Afraid of Commitment?

The stats are in. Though Millennials have long been accused of job-hopping and not taking anything seriously, they actually know how to hold down a job. 

According to recent research from the Pew Research Center a fifth of millennials have been with their company for five years or longer, which falls in line with the stats around Generation X.

Compare that to the typical US worker who, as of January 2016, had been in their current job for 4.2 years, up from 3.5 years in 1983, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

When it comes to relationships, the data shifts a smidge. Specifically, more than half of all millennials (59%) have never married, and 9% are in domestic partnerships, per data collected via Gallup poll. So what gives? Are we able to hold down jobs, but not relationships? Are we afraid of commitment? 

We say no. And we have some ideas as to how you can put a ring on your career and embrace commitment. 

Embrace the One-Year Career Mentality

We have to first acknowledge that there has been a shift. There is no longer a straight and narrow career trajectory. It’s highly unlikely to see anyone in a 40 year career. In fact, some people say the only constant is change. 

This shouldn’t scare you off, however. It should fire up your furnace. Enter: the 1-Year Career. 

It’s not what you think. 

According to Baily Hancock, “The 1-Year Career is a whole new way of thinking about work and your place in it. It encourages you to evaluate your professional happiness far more frequently than the generations before us had to, setting short-term goals and achieving them with small, actionable steps year after year throughout your entire career.”

So yeah, contrary to what it sounds like, it does not mean you should go leapfrogging across jobs and careers every 12 months. 

Rather, says Baily, you should think about your career in one-year increments. By doing this, “it enables you to focus on only the next couple of steps ahead of you.” She explains, “We’re far less likely to feel overwhelmed when we consider not what we’re going to do with our entire life, but instead, what we’re going to do in the next 365 days. One year seems doable; long enough to accomplish a good amount, but short enough that we can plan for most of the variables that life may throw at us.”

What Else Might Life Throw At You?

A bouquet at your BFF’s wedding, perhaps. Don’t be afraid to catch it.

Or feelings. 

Committed doesn’t only mean to one person. 

Committed can be to your job. To your family. To your best friends. And it’s the new trailblazing, forward-thinking concept from Simon G., the leader in the world of fine jewelry. 

Through Committed, Simon G. is expressing their commitment to quality, love, unity, kindness and so much more. Commitment can mean many things to different people whether to family, career, friends, or values. From the beginning, Simon G. Jewelry has celebrated the best of life by offering jewelry that exceeds expectations through inspired individuality and a ceaseless passion for detail. With decades of knowledge and experience, Simon G. knows the value of commitment over the long term, and their work honors this legacy.

Committed is bold, modern, and memorable. Which, is exactly the kind of woman you are. 

What are some fresh, new ways you show your commitment? Comment below. 

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