3 Ways to Rebound from a Bad Career Move

1. Don’t let your mistake break you.

Whenever you face a setback, try to consider the positive in your situation. If you took a risk and failed, at least you took the risk in the first place! It may not have gone as planned, but you don’t have to let one mistake or failure steer you from your ultimate career goals.

2. Look at your failure with new eyes.

Challenges and even failure are required in order to move ahead and achieve a goal, but that’s really tough to remember when you’re feeling defeated. Try to develop a career growth mindset, one where you know that progress is worth fighting the fears that turn us into scaredy cats. Then, you can look at your situation with new eyes and determine how to proceed.

3. Learn from those who made it.

When you experience your own career setbacks, it’s helpful to speak with someone who can share some wisdom on how they faced a similar setback and emerged stronger on the other side. Getting feedback not only helps you to refocus, but it can also help you effectively deal with your feelings of defeat and remind you that you’re not the only one who’s ever felt this way. You can see how they embraced their negative experiences and turned them into positive ones, and more importantly, you can use their methods to do the same.

When we’re faced with choices in our career, sometimes they work out and sometimes they don’t. You can’t be perfect in each choice, but you can grow with each experience. Because by taking risks and failing, we’re able to pinpoint what does work by eliminating what doesn’t.

Now, what I’m not suggesting is that you just try anything and everything haphazardly because it’s OK to fail. What I’m saying is that mistakes and failure as a result of bad choices in your career will happen. It’s not something to avoid; it’s something to expect, to plan for and eventually to become proficient at handling.

Accepting your failure doesn’t mean being proud of it, cursing the world for your bad luck, or admitting to yourself that you’re useless and should give up. True acceptance is understanding that you hit a roadblock and now need to figure a way around it, by shaking off negative feedback, receiving constructive criticism and moving forward in an innovative and exciting way.

SOURCE: SUCCESS.COM