When you have a setup back or disappointment, you can respond to it in one of three ways.
First option is to become depressed. I know no one wants this option, and we could all say from outside the situation that we aren’t going to do this. But in reality, the more highly we think of ourselves, the more likely we can become critical, negative and condemning. Perfectionist — yeah, this is where you’ll likely end up.
The next option is to forget about it. Act like it didn’t happen. Bury it and keep on walking. This is very likely an option for people who have much experience with failure or hard times. This is where I shifted after always feeling bad for not living up to my ideals. I realized that God’s not condemning me, so why not just act like it was nothing…
The problem is how can we learn from it, if we act like it didn’t happen?
This leads us to the last option which is learning from it. Processing what we went wrong. Reflecting on our decisions, analyzing the context which allowed the setback to happen. If we can take some time to investigate the incident from a few different angles, we’re likely to gain some insight.