How to turn SETBACKS into SUCCESSES

I’ve experienced more setbacks — relationships, professional, and financial, to name a few — than I care to remember.

Among other things, I got bankrupt in 2011. When I did, my only option on the table was to fly away from the country that was my home at the time, into Switzerland, the country where I was born, that I had left 41 years earlier, in 1980, to work, live and love abroad.

I landed in Switzerland with $800 in my jeans pocket, a 25-kilogram backpack, an IKEA shoulder-bag with my desktop, all the movement I need between my ears, and no home to call my own.

Thus equipped and with generous help from my country, I slowly but surely turned my past setbacks into successes, not for the first time, but for the final time this time. Here’s what I did:

• Forgot what I had experienced and read in the 64 years before.
• Restarted anew by knowing only what I remembered.
• Turned head over heart, to heart over head (“Where is fancy bred,in the heart or in the head?” – Shakespeare).
• Began to trust my senses — feel, see, hear, smell, touch, and taste — again, rather than the senses of strangers through hearsay only.
• Discovered that everything I know is a word, box included, compliments Ludwig Wittgenstein.
• Decided that think outside the box is bull, that think outside the word instead makes perfect sense.
• Ended thinking thoughts and began wording words instead (the two are identical, hence make no difference).
• Realized what I want is what I’ve done since before the day I was born.

Though this post is about how to turn setbacks into successes, I remember the setbacks as if they were yesterday, but I still don’t know what success is supposed to be.
However, it does not bother me anymore.
Knowing what I remember is more than enough, I find, to turn my setbacks into making my dreams come true.

Now, I’d love to hear from you:

• What’s your story of turning a setback into a success?
• How do you define success in your own life?
• What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned from overcoming adversity?”

PS.
For your FREE copies of SUCCESS QUOTES WORTH READING TWICE or LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN QUOTES WORTH READING TWICE, email beat@schindlersword.com with “Success” or “Ludwig” in the subject line (separate emails please).

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