It’s often said that for every two steps forward, you often take one step back. In life, not everything goes according to plan, and turns how you expect.

So, how to stay motivated despite failure? Step one is accepting the fact that setbacks will happen. Knowing that is often a boost to your confidence. Next, when one of those setbacks occurs, make an assessment of where you stand. If you didn’t get that dream job or promotion, ask yourself if it’s truly that important. Naturally, a job is vital to supporting yourself and your family, but unemployment or not getting a promotion is not the end of the world.

Sometimes, if you just review all the good things that you have in your life, you can boost your spirits. Losing out on that big promotion is bad, but be glad that you still have a job. If your house has holes in the roof, remember all of the people who live in much worse conditions, and some are even homeless.

There can also be bad news from your physician; cancer or another type of serious medical problem. When this occurs, keeping a positive mental attitude is known to be beneficial to your long-term health. So, surround yourself with friends and family.

Another step in helping to keep yourself motivated is to look at means of self-improvement. If you’re a writer and your latest work was rejected; look at ways to improve the likelihood of being accepted next time. Review your material and see if a bit of re-writing is called for. Review the agent/publisher you sent it to; do they not handle the genre of your material? An agent who handles science fiction isn’t going to want your romance novel! That sort of setback can be caused by nothing more than poor planning on your part.

You can also motivate yourself by seeing what others have done to overcome adversity. Gandhi led an entire nation to freedom against the most powerful empire the world has ever known, and he did it without firing a shot. He and his followers also faced enormous setbacks at every turn; yet, they were finally successful in driving out the British and obtaining home rule. If they had given up after a single problem, what would have been the outcome of their campaign?

When looking for the means to improve yourself, you have to figure out what sorts of things can help you. Maybe you need to enroll in some classes to help in that goal. If you are an engineer intent on moving up the corporate ladder that means getting promoted into management. So, taking some business classes would help. As another example, an actor looking for a job might try taking lesser paying roles as a means of staying around people in the acting field. While not very profitable, in so doing you’ll stay around people in show business. Not only will they be an inspiration to you, but networking with them might open other job opportunities for you.

When you’re out working in a business, you almost always find some form of office politics occurring. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a job with a decent company that has a decent management team. But, it’s a sad fact of life that some companies like to play employees against each other. When you consider the huge number of available employees out in the job pool, some managers see it as a way to toughen the workers and winnow out the weak. Given how highly competitive businesses are today, you can understand it to some extent. So, how do you survive and stay motivated when faced with office politics?

Step one, building good relationships with the other workers in the company. This doesn’t mean being best friends; you don’t have to even associate with them outside of work, it merely means being professional, courteous and helpful - something as simple as complimenting them on their family and asking how their spouse and children are doing can be enough. Also, pay attention when they tell you things about their family; nothing is more counter-productive to building a relationship than looking bored while they’re talking.

Next, watch your actions at work. Do you spend a lot of time gossiping about other employees? If you talk about one employee with another, the second employee may think you’re doing the same about them. Do you have a good work ethic? If you play games or read the newspaper when you should be working, you will not please your boss and co-workers. How good are you at following through on promises? Next is your appearance; you need to dress in an appropriate fashion for your work. If you’re a woman, very tight or overly revealing clothes are not good.

Then there’s the office politics of others. If your supervisor says one thing and then does the other, or tells you something one day, and denies it the next day, it can make your life insane. If possible, use memos and notes to document things. At a meeting, write down any orders your boss gives you, and then write them all down as a note to send to your boss. Be sure to keep a copy of that note! You may also have a boss or co-workers who have you do a task for them, and then ask that you give them all of the documents. But, if they lose it, you’ll get blamed. So, be sure to keep a copy of the work you give them.

Sometimes the work you do for a boss or co-worker might get lost on purpose. Now, why would they do that? This is where true office politics is to blame; you may not be the target of the problem at all. It could be that you got a job that someone else wanted, or the supervisor that hired you is a rival to another supervisor, and thus the second one sees you as a threat to their position within the company. As a result, the second supervisor could be determined to get rid of you. This can be a tough situation to deal with. About your only defense is to align with the staff loyal to your supervisor. It isn’t perfect, but it’s about the best means of overcoming severe office politics.