Doggone it! I recently realized that I was doing something the wrong way after spending months working on it, so now I’m back to the drawing board trying to make corrections and improvements. It was hard not to feel that I had wasted my time, but I managed to reign in my emotions and recognize that I had merely encountered a setback. Fortunately, a little bounce kicked in, and I immediately set to analyzing my missteps and regrouping.

Life will throw curve balls that we’re not prepared to hit. You’ve probably dealt with a frustrating setback before and had a moment when you felt dumb and discouraged. So long as you’re human, you will sometimes have those emotions. But don’t let them fester and paralyze you. Roughly 110 billion people have lived on this earth, so whatever setback you’ve encountered has been experienced by many others before you.

Bounce is something we all need to summon from time to time. It’s what drives you to spring into action as well as recover from setbacks. When you have bounce, it won’t let you sulk too long over failures and oversights. A small setback may slow you down, and a big one may bring you to a halt. But the bounce in your spirit will compel you to come out swinging again, just as so many who lived before you have. That curve ball you didn’t see coming will be something you can reflect on and learn from. Keep swinging and you’ll figure out how to hit it.

Sayonara until next time.