Setbacks happen in business and in life.  It’s just a part of life, and something everyone can relate to.  Everybody tries, everybody fails, and everybody has successes in their life. 

Business owners (especially in the startup phase) know this already – that feeling that we are connected with our businesses.  A new strong competitor in town, losing a key resource, or dealing with new or protracted legal issues can drain us emotionally.  We connect ourselves to strongly we feel it in our guts, and our failures can consume our thoughts and overpower us. 

Roller coaster is only the beginning. We go to sleep scared for our businesses, and ready to throw in the towel.  We wake up with more energy and ready to fight, or with some new creative idea that we can try and we’re ready for more fun

But it’s important to remember that there IS a separation between ourselves and our businesses.  Some things we may fail at, and some things we may succeed at.  But when it’s time to move on, don’t forget to lose the lesson.

• When life serves you lemons, make lemonade.  But don’t call it “Minute Maid” lemonade- the people at minute maid don’t like it when you do that.
• It’s not how many times you fall down, it’s how many times you stand back up.  But next time you’re about to stand back up, you might want to consider staying low and crawling over to a place where whatever keeps knocking you down can’t get to you.
• Fail early, and fail often.  It’s from failure that we learn.  But be careful – everyone has their own capacity to learn, and you don’t want to fail more than you can learn from.

Now with those quotations, they are a little tongue in cheek – meant to be funny.  But after I wrote them I am proud of them – there really is wisdom there.  The final word is that “we are not our failures.” Our business might fail;  Our investments might fail; and our health might fail.  But they are not a reflection on you.  They do not define you. 

Others may try to define you, but they only define their perception of you.  The only perception that matters is how YOU define you.  And your failures shouldn’t be anything more to you than a badge of courage – as long as you learn from them.