Episode 735 · Feb 27, 2023

Focus on Growth to Carry You Through Losses and Setbacks

Listen

Life has a way of knocking you off balance when you least expect it. In this episode of The Daily Mastermind, George Wright III delivers a grounding message about what to do when you find yourself dealing with setbacks, loss, and the kind of difficulty that can derail even the most disciplined person.

The episode opens with a quote from Vince Lombardi that sets the tone for everything that follows:

If you can accept losing, you can't win.

George is quick to clarify: this is not about avoiding failure or pretending losses do not happen. It is about refusing to accept losing as your permanent state. When you are in the middle of a struggle, the question is not whether you can eliminate the pain. The question is whether you can anchor yourself to something stable enough to carry you through.

Why Setbacks Can Derail Even Strong Habits

George draws on his own life to make the point real. About ten years ago, he found himself going through a divorce. Despite 25 years in the personal development space and a strong track record of building healthy habits, he still lost his footing. Difficult relationships do not stay contained to one area of your life. They bleed into your mindset, your business focus, and your daily routines.

His solution was not to rebuild everything at once. It was to find the one thing he could control and do it every day: working out.

How One Daily Commitment Becomes Your Foundation

What George discovered is that the goal itself did not matter as much as the act of showing up. He was not trying to reach a fitness destination. He was trying to create consistency. And that consistency produced cascading results: better self-discipline, a stronger mindset, more confidence, and a growing sense of control over his own life.

If you can find progress in things that you control, you're going to find progress in things you can't control.

That is the core idea. When external circumstances feel impossible to manage, you redirect your energy toward what is within your reach. The internal progress you build there does not stay contained. It spills over.

What to Focus On When You Are Struggling

George outlines a practical approach for getting back on track during hard seasons:

Commitment and consistency to something. It does not matter whether it is working out, journaling, a gratitude practice, a dietary change, or a morning routine. What matters is that you pick one thing and you stay consistent with it. That single commitment creates peace of mind because it gives you something you can actually control.

Find your first domino. Your one thing does not have to be the most powerful item on your list. It just has to be the thing that, once you do it consistently, starts making the other areas of your life better. Maybe it is waking up early enough to own your morning. Maybe it is showing up to a space where you have accountability. Identify that first domino and knock it down every day.

Start with one thing only. This is where most people trip up. When you are struggling, it is tempting to pile on every improvement at once: get to the gym, fix your diet, start reading, build consistency across five areas simultaneously. George calls this setting yourself up for failure. Start with one thing. Build your foundation from there, then add to it layer by layer.

The Power Is in the Process

George reminds us that the journey itself is where success and happiness actually live. Focusing on your foundation is not just the cause of eventual success. It is the actual strategy.

Success at different levels will always require a different kind of focus. What worked when you were thriving may not be what you need when you are rebuilding. The willingness to return to fundamentals, to do the small consistent thing when you feel least like doing anything, is the discipline that separates people who come back from people who stay stuck.

The 12 Prosperity Pillars as Daily Anchors

George also references his 12 prosperity pillars as a tool for daily reinforcement. These include principles such as "I create my life," "I focus on solutions," "I create an attitude of abundance," and "I create daily rituals." He recommends reading these affirmations every day as a way of keeping your foundational mindset active, especially during difficult periods. Returning to these principles is itself an example of the kind of consistent daily action he is describing.

Action Steps

Identify the one area of your life you can consistently control right now, whether that is exercise, journaling, a morning routine, or a gratitude practice.
Commit to that one thing daily for at least two weeks before adding anything else.
When you feel the urge to pile on more improvements at once, pull back and focus on your one domino.
Use daily affirmations or foundational principles to keep your mindset grounded during hard seasons.
Track progress in the thing you can control, and notice how it begins to affect areas that felt beyond your reach.

When life gets difficult and your usual routines start to slip, you do not need a complete overhaul. You need a foundation. One honest commitment, made daily, is the starting point for everything else. It is never too late to start living the life you were meant to live.

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

All right, welcome back to The Daily Mastermind, your daily dose of inspiration, motivation, and education. My name is George Wright III, and I am your host. For those of you that are first time joining us, I've spent 25 years in the personal development, financial education, and business strategies type of arena. And the reason I started The Daily Mastermind, the mission of the Daily Mastermind is to help you to create and live your best life. And we do this by providing these free thoughts and ideas on a day-to-day basis, this community, these daily rituals that you can use in order to become the best version of yourself and truly live a fulfilled and happy life. So let me start you today with the Daily Mastermind quote of the day. And if you haven't downloaded the Daily Mastermind mobile app, I encourage you to do that. You'll get that quote every single day with some other great additional information. But the quote today is from Vince Lombardi, and it's, If you can accept losing, you can't win. Listen to that carefully. If you can accept losing, you can't win. Now, obviously, we talk about the fact that you need to focus on failing more often and that failure is something that you can use towards success. But Vince Lombardi says something really important here, and that is if you can accept the idea of losing, then you can never win. It doesn't mean that you don't process that loss. And so it's so important today and every day that you find ways to continue to be consistent. And one of the ways that you can be consistent is with daily affirmations. So what I'm going to start doing, some of you that have been with me for a while know that over this 25 years that I've had the opportunity to mentor with some of the greatest thought leaders, experts, authors, people that have overall created a lot of success in their life, I used a lot of that time to put together what I call the 12 prosperity pillars. These are, I put a poster together for it, but I do this because it's something that I feel like are key fundamental foundational principles that you can use in your life. And I've also found that it's so important that you remind yourself of these foundational principles every day. If you accept these principles, you're going to find that you're going to create more success, fulfillment, happiness in your life. So what I'm going to do just to kind of help you to continue to master your daily rituals is every day on the podcast I'm going to go ahead and go through those 12 pillars just as a reminder for you So let do that real quick right now These 12 pillars are this I create my life I take personal responsibility I act in spite of my mood I surround myself with positive people I focus on solutions. I create an attitude of abundance. I choose to be happy. I always think win-win. I am committed to lifelong learning. I create daily rituals. I attract success. and I visualize and manifest my life. Those 12 pillars, I believe, are one of the ultimate foundations that you can create in your life. And I'd encourage you to check those out. There's a tab in the mobile app, by the way, that says affirmations that you can use to pull that poster up every day and just go through those with you because if you have those foundational principles, so many things are going to happen for you in your life. Now, I hope you're having a great week this week. Already off to a great start, But today I want to talk to you about how you can struggle your way to success and happiness by focusing on your growth when you're dealing with losses and when you're dealing with difficult times. It's important to learn to focus on what you can control when you're dealing with loss and setbacks, whatever it is in your life right now. There's so many times that we have had in our lives, I've had them, you've had them, where we find ourselves in difficult situations. And a lot of times when we're in these situations, we wish we had established a consistent habit or set of habits that'll carry us through these difficult times. That's the key to success, you know, having that foundation. But it's not always just the habit. Although the habits obviously are great, you've got to have those habits. But assuming that many of us have not established these habits in our life, it's not just the habit that's the key to getting you through the challenges. Sometimes it's just simply focusing on the foundation, going back to the foundation, going back to the principles, going back to the details that you need to do. And it's the focus on doing that that will help you. I'll give you a great example. I've been in personal development. I've been in business. I've been at various levels of success. And yet, 10 years or so ago, I found myself in a situation where I was getting divorced. and you know if any of you have ever been through one of those situations where you've had a bad bad relationship breakup or a divorce or something that was really relationship to set defining and it was outside your business and your finances and things like this you know that it can rain havoc on every area of your life and without getting into a lot of details because that not really the point here I had found myself in a place where I was losing my focus on my mindset on my business on the things I was doing on a day basis It was difficult to be able to focus on staying positive and doing the things I needed to do that I had been doing so consistently, even if I had established some great habits. And so what I had to do is I had to focus on something that I knew would create some consistency, and that was working out. I told myself no matter what I was going through, no matter what I was doing, if I would just start working out, which is something that I felt was a big domino in creating a lot of other positive changes and focus, I didn't focus on, let me make a point here. I didn't focus on my level of fitness. I didn't focus on the destination of the goal of what I was doing in fitness. I just went back to focusing on building a consistent foundation. And for me at the time, working out in the morning was one of those things that did it. What it did, a byproduct of that, it gave me self-discipline. A byproduct of that, it gave me the right mindset and confidence. A byproduct of that, it gave me more control over my life. And it did provide more habit and consistency. See, when you have things in your life that you can't control, one of the keys, one of the keys is to focus on what you can control. And that's building a foundation of growth. Building a foundation of personal development. Because if you can find progress in things that you control, you're going to find progress in things you can't control. And sometimes it's just knocking down, like I said a minute ago, that first domino. That first domino that will knock all the other dominoes down. And remember, success at different levels are always going to require you to focus on different habits, different foundation. When you're struggling or you're creating a success at a different level, it may take a different focus. So let's talk for just a quick minute about how you can create a great foundation or what to focus on with your foundation. The first thing I think that's important is for you to get that commitment and consistency to something. When you find yourself struggling, when you find yourself dealing with things that are making it difficult for you to stay consistent, Find that one thing. It might be working out. It might be journaling. It might be a gratitude practice. It might be your diet. It might be a mentor or a coach. It might be a certain activity at your work. But find something that you can make a commitment to and stay consistent with What that going to do is drive a level of peace and of mind that you have something you can control in your life So commitment and consistency to something But the second thing is to find what that one thing is. And that one thing is the thing that you feel, it doesn't always have to be the most impactful. It just has to be the thing that you feel will make a difference that will also potentially make all the other areas of your life better. It might be waking up early enough that you can get a hold of your day. It might be showing up to a certain area that you have accountability of. But find that first domino that you can go back and create commitment and consistency to. And then remind yourself, the last thing I was going to mention is, remind yourself that you just need to start with one thing. So many times when we're struggling, we try to pile up all these ideas on us like, If I get to the gym and I eat right and I read and I do consistency and I do this and this and this, it's going to get me back on track. And you're so busy running around trying to create control, and I've done that, that you fail. You set yourself up for failure. Start with one thing that is in your foundation, one daily ritual that you believe. It might be reading your affirmations. Something that you believe will give you consistency and commitment that you can start to build a foundation on. And when you build that foundation, no matter what level you're at, you're going to add another thing and you can add another thing. And slowly over time, you're going to gain back control of various areas of your life. And overall, it's important to understand that the power is in the process. You know, we talk about focusing on the journey and we talk about the process and the journey is really where you find happiness and success. But we also need to recognize that finding focus in your foundation is the strategy. It's not just the cause of your success. Focusing on your foundation is the actual strategy that you can use to create success in your life. So I hope this is an idea that you can find something in your life to bring value to you, that you can implement. Focus on something you can do consistently that you do have within your control. and I guarantee you it'll make a major impact on areas that you don't control. That's my message for today. I hope you have an amazing day today. Look forward to talking with you more tomorrow and do me a favor, you know, share the show. If you've learned anything, if you've gained any benefit from this, just being part of the Mastermind community and having your daily rituals, share the show so that others can do the same. I appreciate you. I hope you have an amazing day. I'll talk with you soon. you

About the host

George Wright III

George Wright III is an entrepreneur, investor, and the host of The Daily Mastermind. Over more than two decades he has founded and scaled several multimillion-dollar companies and built a renowned seminar business that put some of the world's biggest names and brands on stage. With 25+ years across marketing, sales, and executive leadership, he's made a career of turning bold ideas into results — and momentum into lasting growth.

Today his mission is singular: empower driven entrepreneurs everywhere to master their mindset, unlock their potential, and live their ultimate destiny. Through The Daily Mastermind, George shares the Prosperity Principles and strategies that help people create massive change — in their business and in their life.

MORE ABOUT GEORGE→