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When you encounter setbacks in  life or find yourself face-to-face with challenging professional and personal situations, it’s easy to feel discouraged.

One antidote to losing heart is finding a philosophy that you can apply to your experience every time you’re disappointed with people or circumstances in your life, either in the office or  at home.

One such framework that has been  helpful to many clients who I work with as a life coach, career coach, and  executive coach here in New York is to re-imagine troubling scenarios in the light of lesson-learning. If everyone in your life from your supervisor,  colleagues, and clients to your family members and friends were here to teach  you a lesson, then:

  • What is the difficult  client here to teach you?
  • What is the  micromanaging boss here to teach you?
  • What is the false  friend here to teach you?
  • What is the person who’s  unkind at the subway station here to teach you?

Similarly, if everything that  happens in your life holds a message of how to approach things more effectively next time around:

  • What is the failed  presentation here to teach you?
  • What is the poor  annual review here to teach you?
  • What is getting laid  off here to teach you?
  • What is dissolving a  partnership either with a business partner or life partner here to teach you?

Reframing your focus to look for  the lesson can help you move beyond disappointment or self-doubt much more  quickly. What you place your attention on expands in your mind, so choosing to  interpret difficulties as lessons is a smart strategy to help you stay positive  and forward-thinking.

Here are three ways to develop the  healthy habit of viewing other people and situations simply as teachers along  your path of career and personal growth:

Ask yourself some questions.

When challenging circumstances or difficult people threaten  to send your mood south, step back and ask yourself:

  • What is this trying to  teach me?
  • What lessons can I  learn to avoid this type of encounter or circumstance down the road?
  • Can anything positive  come of this?
  • What will I do  differently in the future?

Turning immediately to this list  of questions when you suffer a setback can help you stay grounded in effective action,  rather than feelings of rumination or recrimination.

Look for patterns.

Sometimes when you have an unresolved issue, you’ll find the same thing  happening over and over. Similarly, you may feel like you keep meeting the same  type of difficult person in every job, or experiencing similar conflicts in  different settings. When you notice such patterns, the key is to first bring awareness to the repetition, and then try to determine what’s keeping you  blocked with this particular issue or personality type. If you take time for  self-reflection and/or work with a coach to help you understand what may be  causing these patterns, you can likely stop the cycle and avoid riding the same  merry-go-round again.

Focus on potential positive outcomes.

It’s easy to identify the negatives of an unpleasant  encounter or failure. But it takes more effort to find what might be good about  something  happening. In most situations, there really is a silver lining.  It may take a while to realize its effects, but even the worst circumstances in  time bring wisdom and greater understanding to sufferers. Look for the gift within every setback.