Setback to Setforward

Demon in Bali Botanic Gardens - it's like this!

The other day, I was reminded by a close friend how we can sometimes bump into setbacks.  She said to me, "we are going to have setbacks I know," which had the tone of a negative inevitability. The challenge with the word ‘setback’ is that we tend to interpret it so that it holds us back. The word ‘back’ implies we have to go backwards and ‘set’ makes it sound even more limiting, as if it is fixed. I prefer the word ‘set-forward’ to help me resourcefully work out how what is required.

So here are a few ‘set-forward’ life lessons that I’ve come across recently. 

The first was when I took my 3 girls back to Singapore for part of their school holidays.  My ‘on its last legs’ washing machine seemed to have lost all its legs.  When I put in a small number of clothes (at this stage of its life it could only handle midget size loads), they came out of the washing machine smellier than what went in. My emotions erupted like a volcano, culminating into threatening my husband, “it’s either me or the washing machine that goes”.  Fortunately, he chose the latter and we now have a state of the art, digitally operated washing machine which is such a pleasure to use, my children and husband have to hide their clothes to prevent them from being whisked up and put in the washing machine – they are finding this quite a culture shock after having got used to leaving their clothes hanging around until all the dirt and sweat practically made them stand up on their own! 

The second situation that set me back was when I was reminded of one major hurdle in my life that I thought I had brought under control. Since having children in my early thirties, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), described by medical specialists as a ‘chronic, lifelong disease’. It’s an auto-immune ‘disease’ that attacks every joint in the body and can affect young children to adults. Not liking the words ‘chronic, lifelong and disease’, I’ve done a lot of mind work on myself over the years to set forward this ‘setback’. 

The RA has enabled me to understand first-hand the benefits of keeping fit and eating healthy foods, but a ten day stay in Singapore led me into the temptation of eating the more unhealthy, wheat and sugar laden fast foods which was exacerbated by no exercise. My joints became inflamed and my initial reaction was to view the constantly, throbbing pain as a depressing setback.  As soon as I was alerted to the feeling of a ‘setback’, my thoughts immediately took me back to the days when I was severely incapacitated by the arthritis which automatically led me down the negative spiral of un-resourceful thinking. 

How we can be

Knowing the painful consequences of such limited thinking, I asked myself what was required.

The set-forward was to eat more healthy food and exercise again, so I returned to my aerobics class full of enthusiasm and was welcomed back with open arms by my Indonesian instructor who exclaimed, ‘what happened?’ as he pointed to my abdominal area that I attempted to hold in but nothing happened! This third situation could have set me back even further, but there’s nothing like some brutal honesty to kick start me into action. To add to my abdominal challenge, I had totally lost my rhythm to the moves (not that I had much co-ordination in the first place) and my instructor fell to the floor laughing, so I laughed too which made me feel much better.

Yay!

The good news is that since these ‘setbacks’ and a few more to add to the collection, I’ve experienced some notable ‘set-forwards’, including my RA starting to feel under control again; my daughters complimenting my level of fitness to their friend when we climbed to a waterfall in the mountains, boasting that the reason I was ahead was that I ran 5km every day (this is not exactly the case and I was more interested in returning for lunch, but a good aspiration to have especially as there was a stage in my life where I could hardly walk, let alone run); and my aerobics instructor telling me that he liked to see me laughing at his classes as it made him happy, when really he makes me happy!

As Eckhart Tolle says in his book ‘The Power of Now’:-

“Action arising out of insight into what is required is more effective than action arising out of negativity.”

When those ‘setbacks’ in life occur re-assure yourself that you can set them forward by asking yourself what is required.

Enjoy your ‘set-forward’ way of thinking.

Janet