Why Things Don’t Always Work Out — Lessons from Setbacks, Emotions & Evolving

Why Things Don’t Always Work Out — Lessons from Setbacks, Emotions & Evolving

Sometimes, things just don’t go to plan. In this honest solo episode, James shares a real-time reflection after hitting a bump in the podcast journey — no guest lined up, a canceled interview, and an unexpected gap to fill. But rather than force it, he leans into the moment to explore a bigger truth: why things don’t always work out.

From past relationships and career changes to health goals and business dreams, James opens up about the patterns, emotions, and hidden lessons behind life’s curveballs. He dives into how unresolved emotions, outdated beliefs, and poor timing can all play a role in things falling apart — and how those same setbacks can become gateways to growth if we’re willing to reflect, feel, and shift.

You’ll hear about:

• The role of unconscious patterns and self-protection
• Why emotional processing (not suppression) is key
• Practical ways to feel emotions like grief, anger, and fear
• The power of slowing down and embracing the journey
• Cultivating a mindset of receiving — not just doing

This is a powerful reminder that failure isn’t failure — it’s feedback. That rest is not laziness. And that our greatest breakthroughs often come from what didn’t go to plan.

If you’ve been feeling stuck, off-track, or like things just aren’t clicking — this episode might be exactly what you need.

🎧 Tune in, reflect, and remember: It’s not about control — it’s about trust, awareness, and growth.

Transcript

0:01

In this episode, I talk about why things don't always work out. We look at the importance of changing old beliefs, habits, and stories, why slowing down is so important, and how receiving and relaxation, especially when combined with inspired action steps is so powerful. Welcome to Man: A Quest to Find Meaning, where we help men navigate modern life, find their true purpose, and redefine manhood. I'm your host, James, and each week, inspiring guests share their journeys of overcoming fear Embracing vulnerability and finding success. From experts to everyday heroes. Get practical advice and powerful insights. Struggling with career, relationships or personal growth? We've got you covered. Join us on Man Quest to Find Meaning. Now, let's dive in. In today's episode, I want to talk about why things don't always work out, and the reason I wanted to do this episode is because I've literally hit a point where a run out of guests. For the first time the other week, I had to repurpose a past episode. I went through a phase of where I literally was two months ahead, but I came to this point where I didn't have any guests and I had to obviously upload a past episode and I was doing one guest and then uploading that the following week. But I had a guest who canceled, which then meant that. I've had to do this episode, which isn't a bad thing. I had to do this episode and I wanted to talk about why things don't always work out because they don't, whether it's a relationship or a business opportunity, or a fitness regime, nutrition, your health. These things in life don't always work out. And this is something that I've had to go through quite a lot throughout, especially out the last 10 years. And one of the biggest things for me has been relationships. You get into a relationship, you think to yourself, yes, this is the person for me, and then perhaps six months, nine months, maybe a year or two down the line it ends. And then where do you go from there? And this is what I've had to learn. I've gone through, I think it's five breakups now over the last 10 years. What it's meant for me personally, is that I'm, I've spent the time between relationships doing the work so that any patterns that I brought up in the past relationship I didn't bring up into the next relationship, and it's allowed me to evolve. But this can be the same for your businesses. It the same for your careers. Maybe you lost a couple of jobs. It's an opportunity to do the work so that you don't have the same patterns or the same thing doesn't happen again and again and again and again. I see in relationships. People go from one relationship to the next, to the next, to the next. Bring in all the old crap that they had in their last relationship into this new relationship, and they wonder why it doesn't work. And I wanted to talk about why things don't always work out because they don't. That's part of life. That's part of growing, that's part of evolving. And it comes down to a, a couple of things. I think these are things that happen to me. It'd be lovely to get your ideas. So if you have any ideas of why things don't work out for you, send me a message. I'll love to hear, hear your ideas and your thoughts. But one thing why things don't always work out and what we just talked about a minute ago is old patterns. One of the reasons that a business or a, career has ended is because of my old patterns. Maybe these old outdated patterns are opportunities to step into new beliefs, new ways of being, new habits. Another reason things might not work out is because maybe we've got some suppressed emotion. I remember in my. First ever relationship. I was what you call a Mr. Nice guy. And when we got into an argument in my first relationship, I used to go into survival mode. I used to almost cower. I used to feel really anxious and I said nothing. And that is one of the reasons I feel that the relationship ended. But another, another thing is that over the years I've never really known how to healthily express my anger. And so during one occasion in my actual first relationship. I went and got drunk and I expressed my anger in not a such healthy way. So being able to express our emotion in a healthy way, whether that's with somebody or without somebody, is a really, really healthy thing to do. So if you say for example, you weren't able to release any of the grief or the sadness to do with a breakup, then that's gonna be stored in your body and you would be taking that onto the next relationship. So it's so important to be able to express the emotions. So whether it's anger, frustration, sadness, grief. Anxiousness to be able to express these emotions in a healthy way, in a way that doesn't hurt people, but it helps us, but we're able to feel that emotion and to release it. Another thing, this is my belief anyway, another thing, I believe the reason things don't work out is because it's not the right timing. I've been into a relationship before and it's just, just wasn't the right timing. The other person was going through a bit of turmoil and I just feel as though we just literally just fell in love and I felt it could probably, it could have been a better time to do that relationship, but nevermind. Another reason why things don't always work out is because what if it's not meant to work out? What if it's not meant to work out? And so it's understanding that in our life, maybe when things happen, maybe there's a lesson to be learned from. That situation not working out. So it's, it's, it's key to be able to reflect on these situations. It's key to be able to identify, as we talked about early, our patterns. It's able to, to identify the lessons which have come from, whether it's a relationship, a business opportunity, or whatever it is. There's always lessons to be learned. And then. It is great knowing the lesson, but then it's about integrating that lesson into our every day. Let's talk about some actionable things that you can do in order to overcome when things don't go to plan. Let's look at beliefs, habits, and stories. Looking at your beliefs, habits and stories can be quite difficult because quite often we have to become conscious of our own patterns. And so firstly, it's about becoming aware. It's about reflecting on situations that have happened in the past and spending some time really journaling about what's going on. So I've noticed with myself with regards to relationships. That on certain occasions I would get really, really anxious. And after looking a little bit deeper into that anxiousness, I realized that I was afraid that if I was to say something, the other person would be turned off and the relationship would end, so then suddenly I would receive no love. So the whole idea of this pattern was about me allowing myself to receive love from somebody else. So once I had done a bit of reflecting on a situation, it's then about acknowledging that these patterns are okay, because in the past, these patterns have kept me safe, and it's knowing that these, these patterns, these habits, these beliefs were there to protect me. And so it's about showing myself a little bit of compassion, a little bit of non-judgment. But now this is where the work really begins. Because they no longer serve me. And it's about me changing these patterns, these beliefs, these stories, and being able to really step into who I'm meant to become. And so after doing the reflection and acknowledging our reflections. It is about, it's then about replacing the old beliefs, the old habits, the old patterns, the old stories with new ones, ones which really allow us to step into a brand new US. Ones which allow us to see us ourselves as worthy, as deserving, as already loved. We don't need to receive love from somebody else because we can give ourselves the love. It is about changing our beliefs around feeling anxious about feeling fear. It's about allowing ourselves to understand that in the past, these fearful situations, they might have been terrifying for us, but now what we've, we've grown older, we've grown wiser. They no longer serve. So it's about realizing what new beliefs, what new habits, what new stories can I tell myself again and again and again until they become our new beliefs. And once, once you've started to do this again and again and again. It's about just reinforcing it. Reinforcing it, and reinforcing it. And there will be times when you slip back into that old version of you, and that's okay. That is okay, because then you have another opportunity to step into this new you and then you might slip back into that old you and you'll slip. You'll probably slip back into that old you, especially at the beginning, quite a lot. In fact, probably most of the time, but as you become more conscious, more aware, you will be able to notice when you slip back into the old you and then you'll automatically slip into that new version of you. Now let's look at how do we deal with our emotions healthily? Now this will depend upon what the emotion is that you feel the most, but quite often when we feel emotions, emotions are there to tell us that something is wrong and something needs to be looked at. Quite often people, including myself, have allowed the emotion to be suppressed or to run away from it because sometimes emotions can be really, really scary. If you look at grief. Grief for me is a scary emotion because grief actually means that I need to look at a tender part of me that is really, really upset. It feels that sadness that loss. And so looking at emotions can be terrifying. But it's also understanding that emotions are just energy within the body. So when you feel an emotion, whether it's fear, happiness, joy, excitement, you are just feeling the energy within the body. And so understanding that emotions are just energy, I think makes it seem easier to deal with because we can just allow ourselves just to sit there and to feel that sensation within the body. So say for example, grief, you're feeling grief from a relationship that ended, and quite often you'll find grief within the heart space. So can you just, you can just sit there and allow yourself to feel that sensation within your heart. It might bring tears, it might bring a lot of sadness, but by allowing yourself to feel that emotion, you are actually allowing yourself to process it. Or maybe you have. A fear, a fearful situation that you are walking into. And by allowing yourself to feel that emotion ever, wherever that is in your body, feeling that energy within your body, you are able to process that fear, which quite often will then lead to, especially if you do it before the situation or during. It allows you to feel more and more confident in yourself and being able to deal with your own emotions. Other things that I find myself with regards to feeling and dealing of emotions is one, acknowledging that they're there. So understanding that. These. These are emotions we all have emotions. We aren't the emotion. So what I mean by that is sometimes we say, I am sad by saying I am sad. You are actually saying to the body that you are this emotion. So quite often I will say to myself, I am feeling sad, or I'm feeling angry, or I'm feeling frustrated, rather than I am frustrated, or I am angry, or I am grieving, I am grief. It's about acknowledging that emotion. Firstly, no, it's aware there, accepting it for what it is. I actually want to acknowledge that in this exact moment of recording this episode, I am feeling some anger due to a certain situation, and so for, for me in this exact moment, I'm feeling anger in my in my shoulders, around my heart space and in parts of my leg. So it hasn't just got to be one place where you feel the emotion. It could be several different places within the body. And so once I acknowledged this emotion, I then allow myself to feel it. And I could do that in a number of ways. I could allow myself to, to dance, I could allow myself to, to go to do exercise. So you, you can use exercise to feel the emotion. So like I do a lot of CrossFit so I could allow myself to feel that anger while doing burpees or doing weightlifting, whatever, whatever's going on. You could utilize and feel that anger or that emotion while running a certain distance. Another thing you could use is somatic therapy. So this is where you use your body's awareness, breath work, and movement exercises to be more aware of bodily sensations and being able to release these stored emotion. You could use things like breath work going out in nature. I find sometimes processing emotions is great in nature because it gives me an opportunity to speak it out loud and to talk about it. Another thing you can do is you can have a conversation with this emotion. So imagine you're talking to a person and you can talk to the emotion about what's going on and how can you help to, to process this emotion. There are many, many different ways to feel and deal with emotions, but it's finding out what works best for you. Because what works great for me, which is dancing generally. It isn't gonna be great for other people. It's about finding what works for you in regards to the emotion. Just to remember, emotions are there to tell us something is wrong. Here are some of the other ways in which I'm able to overcome things when they don't go to plan or things go wrong, and I want to talk about slowing down. We're always in a rush. We are always looking at ways to be more and more productive, and what I've come to realize over the years, and especially this year, is the importance of slowing down. Because when you slow down. We are able to observe things more clearly. We're able to identify more opportunities. We're able to see what's around us in a more conscious way, and We as human beings, want to get to the end. We always wanna get to the end. We don't want to have to go through the journey. We want to have the, the money, the perfect relationship. We want to have the, the amazing body, the amazing job. Life's a journey. And so it's been able to see our life. As the journey and when we are able to slow it down, we are able to see new opportunities more clearly. We're able to feel the love in relationships. We're able to cultivate a more stronger connection with our friends and family. We're able to feel then sensations in our body when we train. We're able to feel our emotions. And so this leads on quite nicely onto the next step, which is don't rush. Enjoy the journey. The journey is why we're here. And I know sometimes the journey can be horrible at times. The journey can be overwhelming. It can be a lot of anger. There can be a lot of, uh, emotion on these journeys. But I believe that's what we're here to, to witness. We're here to witness all these emotions. We're here to feel these emotions. We're here to to see these opportunities. But from a slow point of view, one thing I've come to realize myself. In these moments is a how important relaxation is. Now I'm doing this money abundance course and one of the things this week's, this month's challenge. Is about relaxation and the importance of relaxation. Now, I'm just quickly mention there's two. There's two phases. You've got the masculine side of things and you've got the feminine, not as in male and female, but with masculine energy. Feminine energy. The masculine energy is all about doing. Doing, doing, doing productivity. It's all about like setting plans, uh, taking action. The feminine energy of what we talked about is about surrendering, about relaxation, about allowing the cells to rest and how the importance of having both the masculine and the feminine. Quite often we will. Only rest when we've done the work and we feel like we've achieved a lot. But this month challenge has changed my perspective a little bit on how important it is to cultivate both action and relaxation at the same time. You go and take an action step, but then you also then allow yourself to relax. You go and take another action step, another defined action step, and then you go and relax, and then you take some more action and you relax. So you go into a supermarket, you buy your food, which is the action side of things. Then you go to the till and pay the money. Now, when you pay the money, you are giving the other person who's on the till or the shop is receiving. There's a way of thinking about this as giving and receiving. So you give, so you do take the action step, then you receive by relaxing. And so it's the importance of cultivating not just an action mindset, but also a mindset of being able to relax. Because when you relax, you allow and you allow things to come in. If you're always doing, doing, doing, doing, there's no energy to receive. There's no energy to receive things because you're always doing so by going into that relaxation mode you allow yourself the space to receive more. I want you to ask yourself, how can you allow yourself to receive more? Could you spend 15 minutes in the morning having a cup of coffee, allowing yourself just to sit there and relax? Whether that's looking outside your window at nature, or just observing what's in your room. Or maybe you could allow yourself to receive more, relax more by going on a, a nice woodland walk and allowing yourself to observe nature. Or it could be a bath. It could be lying in your garden. There are so many ways that you can allow yourself to relax, but it's actually about. Us as human beings, allowing ourselves to prioritize relaxation because we have it in our mind that we can only relax when we've done, when we've done work, when we've achieved something. And what I'm talking about here is about allowing cells to change that a little bit and seeing relaxation as seeing it as part of your action plan. So relaxation becomes a big part, and so you allow yourself to receive more. To just finish off this episode, it's about understanding that things don't always go to plan. Things don't always work out. Situations happen, which knock us off our path. Things happen, which can be terrifying, hurtful. But it's about understanding that quite often these situations are there for us to learn from. They're there for us to grow from. They're there for us to really to, to enjoy or to feel the journey that we are on. And so we've looked at why these things may happen. And I've also mentioned ways and means in which I help myself to deal with these kind of situations, including changing my beliefs, my stories, my habits. I looked at emotions and how emotions are there, tell us something is wrong, and how we can start to feel these emotions rather than suppress them. I talked about slowing down and the importance of not rushing so that we're able to observe what's around us. And I mentioned about cultivating a habit of relaxation of receiving and allowing that to be part, um, part of your path as much as it is to take action. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you have any feedback or any ideas or if you have any, any stories about yourself going through this kind of situations, let me know. Thanks for tuning in to Man a Quest. Find meaning if today's conversation sparked something in you, take a moment to reflect, then take a step. Remember, real growth comes from action, not just insight. If you found value in this episode, share it with a friend. Leave her a review, or reach out and let me know what resonated. Your feedback helps shape the journey we are on together. For more conversations like this, make sure to subscribe and stay connected. You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn for updates, tools, and upcoming guests. Remember. It's not about having the answers. It's about daring to look.