Don't let your setbacks forever hold you back

​As the story goes, Kobe Bryant was a rookie for the Los Angeles Lakers. It was a playoff game. A close one. Kobe had three shots at the end of the game to win it for his team.

Kobe Bryant missed all three.

Post-game, the commentators observed and talked about Bryant sitting on the bench, his head buried in his hands, surely distraught, they supposed.

When Kobe finally rose from the bench, one of the commentators caught up with him for a brief interview. Watching you on the bench, the interviewer said, it's clear you feel awful.

Kobe didn't miss a beat and said, what do feelings have to do with it? I was replaying all of those shots in my head to figure out what I did wrong. And now I know. I won't miss those shots the next time, he said.

I've come to know that events that are setbacks in our lives are not the actual setbacks. It's the emotions that come with them. And what we choose to do with them. That's what often sets us back.

Kobe's emotions could have turned to feelings of disappointment. Of regret. Of questioning his abilities. And those feelings could have lingered a long time and turned a few missed shots into longer term destruction.

If it sounds like I know all about that, I do.

I have had some setbacks in my life. But what held me back, what held me back for months and in many cases decades, wasn't what happened in those setbacks. It was the emotions that I let turn into feelings that turned into quiet hostage-takers of my life.

One day's event can linger as decades of bitterness. As decades of shame and guilt. As decades of self-hatred. It is so hard to find the joy in a new day when you carry feelings into that day that are intent on reminding you of the turmoil of some previous day.

Kobe clearly understood that.

When he sat on that bench processing his setback, he was essentially leaving all of the emotions and feelings associated with it sitting on the bench he got up from. So, when the interviewer asked him how the event made him feel, there were no feelings to talk about.

They were back on the bench.

I am better at that these days. I'm not perfect, but much better. And it's been a great thing to get better at, because no matter how hard I try, I'm not avoiding setbacks in this life. But what I can avoid is letting those setbacks turn to forever hold me backs.

I encourage you to think about that when you face your next inevitable setback. We all need a moment or a period of time to put our heads in our hands. To process what just happened. To feel all the emotions and feelings. Take that time.

But when you get up, when you move on, leave all of that on the bench.

Life is hard enough moving on to the next play sometimes. Don't try dragging the bench of your past with you.