Thriving Is a Choice
The short answer
Thriving is a choice: movement toward the top, made one day at a time. After any setback, I climb back with ten momentum moves, starting with guarding your thoughts and the people you let close, then sleep, rituals, new experiences, and finally celebrating each win before chasing the next one.
If you're not growing, in business or in life, you're dying. There's no standing still.
I learned that the hard way, climbing back after the worst stretch of my life. What I took from it applies to any knockdown: a lost business, a hard ending, a diagnosis, a year that took more than it gave. Thriving is a choice. It's movement toward the top, and you make it again every day.
What do you protect first?
The first three moves are about what goes into you and what comes out of you.
Guard your thoughts. You become what you think. After a setback, your mind will happily replay the worst version of events all day. Notice it and stop feeding it.
Take in uplifting people. The people closest to you shape where you're headed. A setback is exactly when you need lifters around you, and exactly when it's tempting to retreat to the people who'll commiserate.
Help others. It's hard to feel sorry for yourself while you're investing in someone else. I challenge myself to make someone smile or laugh every day. Years ago, a stranger's kindness pulled me out of depression, and I've never forgotten what one small act can do.
What keeps the climb going?
Body and mind rituals. Routines set us free. When everything else is uncertain, a morning routine is one thing you control, and they're non-negotiable for me.
Pursue your passions. Life is too short to spend it on what you don't love, and the options are plenty.
Sleep. Sleep is required. A man climbing back on four hours a night is climbing with half his strength.
How do you break the pattern that got you stuck?
Get out of your normal spaces. Keep routines for the have-to's and break the pattern everywhere else. Drive a different way to the gym. Go to a different store. Talk to someone new. Put your left shoe on first. Make your body and your brain think.
Stretch your circles. Go where you're a little uncomfortable. After a loss, impostor syndrome gets loud, and it's lying to you. Don't listen to it.
Try new things, even if they scare you. Most of the risk lives in your head. If you said no to something before, ask what the actual risk was. I've jumped off cliffs and out of airplanes. You don't have to. Just say yes to something new.
Why does the last move matter so much?
Celebrate the wins. You can't grind from one struggle straight past a win and into the next struggle. Mark it. Give yourself a second, acknowledge it, smile, and share it if you want to. A climb with no landings becomes a grind, and a grind is how men burn out halfway up.
These moves work best after you've reframed the loss itself, which is what How Winners Lose is about. The reframe gets you standing, and the ladder gets you moving.
Which of the ten moves have you been skipping?
~b