❌ THIS SILLY MISTAKE OF MINE WILL MAKE YOU LAUGH & LEARN

A month ago... I was invited to participate in a 10km fun ride held in Yogyakarta🚴🏻‍♂️🚴🏻🚴🏻‍♀️

And I got to tell you, being a noob at bike riding, it was no fun ride at all. 10km felt like a 100km!!😱

I remembered at every checkpoint... I will ask the road marshaller... “Reaching?”🤔

He will smile, give me a thumbs up and say... “Belum!”👍🏻

And that will perk me up because it means I am reaching!😉But just when I thought I arrive at the finishing line, I will discover it was just another checkpoint.😔

And I will clarify again, “Reaching??”🤔

The marshaller will smile, give me a thumbs up and say “Belum Belum!”👍🏻👍🏻

And again, this knowledge gave me renewed energy to persevere through the ‘not so fun’ ride🚴🏻‍♂️🚴🏻🚴🏻‍♀️

You won’t believe this, but this went on for a few more times until eventually I arrived at the finishing line🏆

During the break, I complained to my Indonesian friend, “I don’t get it. The marshaller kept saying ‘Belum belum’ but I never seem to arrive at the finishing line.”😧

She looked at me and then laughed for a good one minute…

“Eric, ‘belum’ in Bahasa Indonesian means ‘not yet’ hahahahahaha”😂

Ouch.

Now I have a sore butt AND a bruised ego.

I seriously thought ‘belum’ meant ‘reaching’ which was the only reason why I could survive the excruciating 10km ride!

Looking back, I am thankful I assigned a wrong meaning to the word ‘belum’.

Had I known the actual meaning I would have given up at the first checkpoint.

Then it got me thinking🤔

Every time something bad happens to us, it is the ‘meaning’ we assign to that incident that determines how we respond to them!

Case in point. A prospect cancelled on you at the last minute. You can either interpret this as ‘I am a lousy salesperson’ or ‘The prospect hasn’t seen the value of meeting me”.

The first interpretation is neither constructive nor uplifting, which means you will probably give up and your situation will not improve.

The second interpretation however, is a lot more objective and also constructive, which gives you an opportunity to improve your situation and therefore increasing your chances of succeeding the next time round.

So the next time something bad happens to you in your work life or personal life, take time to assign a more constructive and uplifting meaning to that situation.

There is no right or wrong meaning. Just constructive or not constructive. Remember, we are playing the long game here! There will be setbacks and failures along the way.

And it is how we assign meaning to these setbacks and failures that will determine if we can persevere and arrive at the finishing life, a winner🏆

Agree with the takeaway?