The Triple C Project

When Things Don't Go Your Way; Don't Get Down, Get Curious

• Ryan Spence • Season 2 • Episode 112

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What do you do when things don't work out as planned? 

What do you do if things don't go your way?

Do you get angry? Do you get frustrated? Do you make it mean you're a bad person who's not good enough?

How does that work out for you? If you're anything like I used to be, it probably makes you feel shitty, deflated, and like hiding yourself away from the world.

But doing that ain't get you to where you want to be. It's not going to help you live a Lit! life. 

So what can you do instead? In this week's episode, I will explain how I handled a recent setback in my business and the steps I took to keep myself on track.

Want a hint? It involves getting curious...

I also share an update on my upcoming book, The Triple C Project.

What's your one takeway from this episode? Send a text & let me know

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Speaker 1:

Some of these things have worked as intended. It's been great. Some of them have worked, but not in the way that I intended them to. It's also great, and some of them haven't worked at all. You're listening to the Triple C Project. Welcome to the Triple C Project, the podcast that helps you gain clarity, boost confidence, build courage so you can live life lit. I'm your host, ryan Spence, the Big Law Dropout, life coach, author, speaker, lover of hoodies, hip-hop and big, hairy, audacious goals. If you're tired of living the life you think you should want and ready to start living the life you do want, this podcast will help you get from where you are to where you really want to be. So now we're friends. I invite you to grab a drink, take a seat and allow me to guide you towards living a life that's lit. Hey, hey, welcome to episode 112 of the Triple C Project, and it's an exciting week here. It's exciting because the book is finished. The Triple C Project Find your Place, purpose and Peace in a World that Wants to Box you In is done. The manuscript was sent off to the designer on Monday, august 5th, so the Monday before recording this episode. The cover is almost done, which I'm very excited about. It's gone in a little bit of a different direction than I initially anticipated, but I'm really happy with the results, with what our designer came up with. Beta readers have read it and loved, loved their feedback and their insights. Actually, one of the comments was that the book is the pep talk that they needed at that time as they were going through something, and it kind of helped them to work through that. So, despite the pain and the stress that's been involved in getting this second book together, I'm excited that where I am with it and what has come out of the process, and I'm really excited to share it with you all at some point later this year. Speaking of which, I'm going to start putting together the whole strategy for launching the book, including bonuses for pre-orders, access to the first chapter for free so you can get a taste of what the book is about, and knowing your book club. Other things that haven't quite come up yet. I've got to start brainstorming and getting those together. I haven't quite come up yet. I've got to stop brainstorming and getting those together, and so if you want to be in the know about all of that first in line and all of that good stuff, then you're going to want to get on my email list, and you can do that by heading to imryanspencecom and joining the email list there, or just shoot me a DM on Instagram with your email address. Dm on Instagram with your email address and I will get you on there so you can be first in line for this second book, which I'm very excited about.

Speaker 1:

Okay, this week I am going to be talking about what do you do when things don't work out as planned. So I often see this. I see this in myself, but see this with clients where something doesn't work out the way they intended. You're really excited about a particular thing, whether it's something you're going to do. You're going to proceed with something you're going to get, and when it comes down to it, it just doesn't happen the way that you envisage it.

Speaker 1:

So what do you do? Do you get angry? Do you get frustrated? Do you beat yourself up telling yourself it's all down to you, that you're just not good, you're just not worth it. You shouldn't have no business trying to do that thing in the first place. Do you quit and say that's it. It's obviously not working, I'm obviously not good at this and I'm never going to do this again Now.

Speaker 1:

These are all valid responses to that disappointment the disappointment of failing to get that dream job or that promotion, or of hearing crickets on your social media posts that you put out there asking for sponsorship for a run that you're doing for charity, or when you launch that new venture that you're excited about, only to have the people you thought would support you remain silent or, even worse, just be completely indifferent about the whole thing. It's natural to feel that anger, to feel that frustration, to feel that it's all about you and your self-worth, and to allow that to bring you down and make you not want to place your head up above the parapet again. I know, trust me, I've been there and what I want to do here is offer you another way, and it's not about denying those initial feelings that you have, but it's about what I've shared before the AAA process Acknowledge, accept, adapt. It's acknowledging those feelings of frustration, anger, and then it's accepting that, yeah, the thing didn't go the way that you wanted it to go, and then it's adapting, and what I'm going to offer you is a way to adapt and get comfortable, because once I left big law and set off on this path that I'm on forging my own way in the world and doing things completely differently to the way that I've been conditioned to do them. That comes with its own challenges, and anyone who you see on social media doing something, a lot of the times you're going to see that highlight reel, and that highlight reel is going to show you that everything's great, everything's rosy. And if you've been struggling to do something that a person you see on Instagram is doing and they seem to have it all together, that's probably going to make you feel even more shit. But, trust me, that is a highlight reel, and behind the scenes there's a lot of other shit that's going down. I know from conversations that I've had and from my own experience. So, first of all, I want to offer you that, and what I also want to offer you is this Instead of getting down about the thing not working out, get curious.

Speaker 1:

Ask yourself why didn't that thing go my way the way that I intended? And once you've figured out what those reasons are, then go through and ask yourself are these reasons things that I can control? And maybe there will be some things that you can control and you could do differently next time. And that's how we learn from our quote-unquote failures, our mistakes, and sometimes there will be things which you just couldn't do anything about. And that's good to know too, because there's no point focusing on those things that you can't do anything about, those external factors which are completely out of your control, because focusing on those is only going to put you into this spiral and keep you down, keep you feeling miserable. But if you can detach and think, yeah, I can't do anything about that and let those go, it's kind of like when you're in a hot air balloon and you just let go of some weight and you find yourself soaring a little bit higher because you're not carrying things that you can't change, which then allows you more space to focus on the things that you can change and get curious as to what didn't work. So I'm going to share an example for me, for quite recently Now, in the process of my personal development quest and building this business that I have coaching, of guiding people back to themselves I've tried a lot of things right, a lot of things, a lot of different things.

Speaker 1:

I get so many ideas I mean on a daily, weekly basis that I want to pursue, and sometimes I get so excited I do. I think, yep, I'm going to do that thing. And some of these things have worked as intended. It's been great. Some of them have worked, but not in the way that I intended them to. It's also great. And some of them haven't worked at all. Yeah, quite a few of them haven't worked at all actually, but hey, that's the way of the world.

Speaker 1:

And now when I talk about working the concept of something working it's going to be different for everyone and different in different situations. You're going to have different goals and you're going to have different measures of success. So what working means to me may not be what working means to you or working means to your colleague. So I think the first thing that you got to do, whatever it is that you're trying to achieve whether you're trying to secure the job or the promotion, or whether you're trying to get clients for a new service that you're offering, or whether you're trying to get clients for a new service that you're offering, or whether you just want to increase your follower account on Instagram or you want to boost your authority in a particular area of expertise you want to get clear on what it is that you're trying to achieve. I mean, what will it mean for that thing to work? What's the measure of success for you?

Speaker 1:

And you need to get clear on that before you do the thing, because otherwise, what does that mean? You can put all of your focus on a particular thing as being the thing that works. That thing may not happen, but there may be a number of other things that do happen which could also be success, could also mean that they are working, but you won't know that if you've just focused on, for example, making more money, well, why do you want to make more money? What is that about? Is it about the money? Or is there something deeper than the money? Does making the money tie to validation of your idea? Does it tie to validation of your skill level? There could be other things that mean that it's working. So you've got to get clear on what working means. So that's the first thing you need to do and then, as I say, when you've done the thing, you've got to look at well, did it work? And if it didn't, well, why? And not allow yourself to be dragged down to the pits of despair that you didn't hit everything that you wanted to hit, because there's going to be a lot of reasons why you didn't hit those things, and the clearer you can be on those reasons, the more helpful it's going to be to you, the better it's going to serve you and it's going to allow you to go again and tweak and refine until you get to a position that works better for you.

Speaker 1:

So let me share a recent example from my own life, my own experience. Now, as you'll know, if you listen to the last few episodes of this podcast, you'd have heard me talk about a webinar that I plan to host on the 5th of August 2024. And that webinar was entitled the High Performance Way Six Secrets of Highly Successful People, and my goal was to have 10 people register and attend that webinar. It would be the first time that I was hosting it and I kind of was wanting to to try it out. I'm starting to do more speaking, being asked to do more events, and it was a way of again just kind of getting in my reps of doing more of these putting events, putting talks together and delivering them. So, yeah, the the goal of this was to get 10 people involved, to attend, to register and to attend. It was to get in the reps of putting together a talk, delivering a talk, and it was also to continue to work on marketing. Because when I started this business, like many people I've spoken to who started businesses, you have this skill, this thing that you can do really well, that you love to do, that you want to share. For me it's coaching and yoga and you go into business to do that and then realize that there are these other things which you'd never done before and have no idea how to do, like marketing and selling, and so I'm constantly working on marketing and trying to figure out what's working for me and what isn't. Anyway, back to the webinar. So I suppose I host this webinar on August 5th and I didn't host the webinar on August 5th In the end. I was wanted to have 10 people attend and I had zero people register. I had zero people attend.

Speaker 1:

Now, when I think of me three, four years ago, this would have absolutely crushed me. I would have been embarrassed to talk about it. I wouldn't have shared this with a soul and I would have carried this around with me like a weight, saying telling myself I'm just awful, nobody wants what I'm giving, I'm selling, I'm presenting. Like I should just give up and quit and not do this anymore. Like that's the narrative I would have been telling myself. I know because I've told myself that in the past when I talk about my um, my reticence to share on social media prior to setting off on this personal development quest, like I'm serious, you're gonna look bad for my history and I would share fun things about a night out or something like that. But to share anything beyond that that was maybe professing a, a viewpoint or trying to kind of jump up support for something. Like I was terrified because of crickets, because of nobody getting involved, and so all of those feelings would have come back and told me that this was just not worth it.

Speaker 1:

And there's no. I had no business trying to launch and present a webinar in the first place. Fortunately, that's not where I am anymore and I come back to my AAA process acknowledge, accept, adapt, okay. So acknowledge, look, zero people registered and attended this webinar. That's just the fact. And then I had to accept yeah, okay, that's not kind of the result that I was looking for. That didn't really work by the metrics that I set for myself as to what working would have meant. And then I had to then adapt and so with adapting here, it was like a getting curious. So why? Why didn't it work? Why did nobody register and attend?

Speaker 1:

And this is where data can help you. So I went back and looked at the stats for the landing page that I created, for example, started there and I only had 16 people view the landing page. So immediately, that tells me something that tells me that not enough people went to the landing page. If I want 10 people to attend, just basic industry statistics tell you that you're going to need more than 16 people viewing the page, and one of those people is probably me as well when I was testing it out. Okay, so right, start there Only has 16 people view. Now, did I only have 16 people view because I'm no good at coaching? No, I know, that's not the case. Did I have 16, only 16 people view because I'm no good at speaking? No, that's not the case. Did I have only 16 people view because I'm no good at speaking? No, that's not the case. People hadn't even attended the webinar yet, so that couldn't be it.

Speaker 1:

So it starts you then talking about me and my skills and kind of gets me to dig deeper. So in digging deeper, it took me to one thing that I'm aware of about myself, which is that I don't talk about things enough. You know, and I know this because what happens is I get an idea, I get excited about it, I put it out there, I talk about it, and then I don't. And when I look around at people who do launch things quote unquote, successfully they talk about it a lot. I'm on a lot of email lists and when somebody is coming up to launch something, I get a ton of emails and I don't send emails on that level at all. I don't talk about my stuff on social media to that level at all either. So the fact that I only had 16 views on the page tells me not enough people knew about it. So therefore, I need to talk about it more. Next thing it tells me is that I need to talk about it more in a compelling way.

Speaker 1:

So why should people attend? What is the benefit for people attending? Why is it imperative to their own growth, to their own transformation, that they attend this webinar? Put myself in their shoes, look at the clients that I've worked with, what comes up for them, and talk about webinar in those terms. And I look back and, yes, I've done that, but again, I hadn't done that enough.

Speaker 1:

Next thing personal invitations. I didn't make any personal invitations. Now, it's all very well sharing on social media, which I do, but look, I don't have control really over who sees what I share. The algorithm does, and the algorithm does whatever it's going to do. So when I talked before about looking at reasons and what's out of your control, that's out of my control. The algorithm is out of my control. How many people it shows my post to is out of my control. So I can keep putting posts out there and I did and I should but I can't control who sees them.

Speaker 1:

But what I can have some control over is personal invitations. I can choose who I send an invitation to and I can track whether or not they have seen it and then from that I can get a sense as to whether or not they were interested. Did they register, did they attend and why not? And if I know that person well enough, maybe I can ask them that question Well, why not? What was it about it? Was it the timing, you know? Was it just not compelling enough? Were you busy that evening, you know? Was it the time zone? So making personal invitations is another thing where I thought, okay, that's something I could look at next time.

Speaker 1:

So, personal invitation speak about it more, speak about it in a more compelling way. Share in more places, you know, not just social media, but just being out and talking to people, telling them, hey, do you know? I mean, I know you're interested in personal growth, personal development um, I know you've got this issue you just sort of talked about here this. I've got this thing I'm running. Maybe it might help you, maybe it might be of interest. So sharing it in more places is another thing that I thought, yeah, okay, that's another way to adapt, another way I could have increased the views of the page, um, and then potentially had more people register and attend and just energetically focus on it more, you know, and not allow myself to, um, go on to the next thing, but really say to myself okay, for this period of time, I'm just going to focus on talking about this one thing multiple times a day in multiple places to multiple people, sharing multiple personal invitations and really just connecting and anchoring to that. And so this doesn't really matter whether you're thinking of selling something, you're sharing things on social media or creating a landing page. This is just.

Speaker 1:

I just wanted to kind of share my process of going through something. When a thing didn't work out the way that I wanted it to work out, that I wanted to share that getting down isn't helpful, like if I just put myself in a box and got into despair and not danger to share anything again. That's not going to help me and it's not going to help the people that I work with, the clients that I work with the clients that want to work with me. But getting curious, just through the little snippet I've shared with you there, going through that process has already thrown up a number of things that I could and would do differently next time. And then I can look next time and say, okay, did those things make a difference? Were there more views to the page? Okay, if there was, great. Okay. Did people register? Yeah, okay, fine. Did the people that registered also attend? And I can kind of again go through these steps and keep refining this each time that I do this, whether it's launching the same thing or something completely different. And in doing that I learned so much about myself and so much about the process, particularly the process. That is not something that I'm trained in ie marketing, no.

Speaker 1:

So how can you apply this to a situation that hasn't worked out for you? Maybe you've gone for a promotion, maybe you were really hoping on a bonus. Maybe you were trying to I don't know get a place, get a marathon spot in one of the big marathons in the world, I mean, maybe you were trying to launch a new business and you've put it out there and are getting crickets. Maybe you're trying to write a book, you know, and you just can't get traction on that. Whatever it is that you have been trying to do that and it isn't working out. It hasn't worked out for you.

Speaker 1:

I'd like you to work through, acknowledge, accept, adapt, and I'd like you to again ask yourself the questions that I talked about at the top of the show why didn't it go your way? Really get honest with yourself, get critical, dig down what is it that didn't work? What is the data showing you? And then, for all of those reasons, split them out into things that you could control and things that you couldn't, and the things that you couldn't, let them go, discard them. And the things that you could control that you could do differently, dive deeper into those and list out some reasons or list out some ways that you would do those things differently the next time around? Are there conversations that you would have to ensure that you are better prepared? Are there better questions that you could ask about a product or business you're trying to launch that would help to steer you down a particular path that is better for you, that people would be more interested in?

Speaker 1:

Is there a way that you could tell the story as to why this particular charity is important to you enough that you want to do this run and raise this money to get people to buy into that story and give you the sponsorship? What is it? Get curious, because getting curious is going to get you further than simply curling up into a ball, getting down, beating yourself up and never trying anything again, and if you do that, you're never going to live life lit, because you're never going to step out of that comfort zone and really embrace everything that you could be and really get after what it is that you want and figure out how to do that. So that's what I want to leave you with this week.

Speaker 1:

I really hope that you take some value away from this episode and I'd love to hear from you what it what it is that you take away how it is that you've applied this triple a process at knowledge, accept, adapt in a way that has allowed you to tweak and refine a particular thing to get to a place that it is working or it's working better each time that you do it. If you head down to the show description, you can click on the link there and just shoot over a text message, which is great. Or email me, hey, at IamRyanSpencecom, or find me on Instagram, linkedin, shoot me a DM and just, yeah, just tell me what you got from this episode and share. Share this episode with a friend. I'd love if you could do that. I'd love if we could keep this ripple effect just going around the circles that we're in, because the more that people start to believe in themselves and start to, I guess, just break out of the boxes that so many of us are stuck in, the things that can happen from that are exciting. The things that people can do when they really believe in their potential and they remove their limiting beliefs are amazing. So if you get anything from this episode, share it with somebody else who you feel could also benefit. It really helps them and it also helps me to know that, hey, this is what people are getting from the show. This is what people need and helps me to create more episodes like that. And, of course, my final ask leave a review the whatever podcast app you're listening to this show on just head over, and leave a review for the show, a rating and a few words about why you listen, what it is you take away. And if you can't do that in your app, there's a link in the show description as well for Rate my Podcast, where you can go and do that as well.

Speaker 1:

Really appreciate your support with the show. This is something that I do. There is no team, there are no other people behind it, there is no investment in it. This is just me in my office, my Zen den, here in the garden of my house, on a microphone, sharing my knowledge, my experience, my expertise with you, because I really believe that the more that I can connect people back with themselves, the better the world can be and the better people's lives can be. A lofty mission, I know, but hey, you've got to think big. You've got to think big. Thanks, as always, for being here, for listening in, and I look forward to sharing more with you in next week's episode. Until then, stop living a life of lethargy. Start living life lit. Thanks for tuning in to the Triple C Project.

Speaker 1:

In the spirit of the Triple C, here's three things that you can do to support the show. Head to ratethispodcastcom. Slash triplec or over to your favorite podcast app and leave a review. Reviews really help people checking out shows to see what they can expect and how this show can help them. Second thing you can do share. Share this episode, share a previous episode with a friend, someone who you feel could benefit from what I'm throwing down on this here show. And number three, head to IamRyanSpencecom. Get on the mailing list. I'll be sharing news about the show, news about what I'm up to my new book start writing soon. So to be the first to be in the know, you need to get yourself on the list. Really appreciate you being here and until next week, stop living a life of lethargy. Start living life lit.