When Nothing Goes to Plan
So you know your goal. You’ve broken it down into tasks. You’ve scheduled time for those tasks. And then here comes a wrench flying in to mess it all up.
So, NOW what?
First of all, breathe! Odds are that if this particular task was a life or death situation, you would have jumped on it to handle it. Since you didn’t, it wasn’t. And if it wasn’t life or death, then you’re in good shape.
The single most important question is going to be, “Why?” And you’re going to ask yourself this question again and again until you get to the root cause. We do this because we are going to take the time to determine if this is truly important to us as well as make sure that we are giving ourselves exactly what we need.
So let’s say it was a Wednesday night and you had in your planner that you were going to create your grocery list for your recipes (You remember? The recipes for that four-course meal we’re making?). Instead of doing that, you ended up on the couch watching several episodes of Supernatural. If this has never happened to you, please move along.
Why? There is no right or wrong answer to a “why” question. There is no emotion or shame or disappointment in this question. We are simply asking ourselves why so that we can better understand. I ended up on the couch because I was so mentally drained that I just wanted to decompress.
Ok, great. Given the circumstances, do I feel like that’s what I needed? Here is where we get to show ourselves compassion. Maybe that IS exactly what I needed to relax and feel refreshed. Amazing!! Love that for me. Or maybe I think that I could make a different choice and instead decompress for a shorter period of time and still make my shopping list. Awesome! Now I know and next time I’m in this situation (because it will happen again), I can remember this and possibly make a different choice.
What’s important here is that we really take the time to understand our choices. They’re neither right nor wrong, they’re just the choices we made with our time and we can make different choices in future if we want and need to.
If we find ourselves in this exact scenario several more times, then we need to determine if this goal is actually important to us. It’s really easy to set goals that we think we *should* have. Maybe you only set the goal to make that four-course meal because you feel like everyone else your age is making four-course meals all the time and so you should be to as well. But maybe you don’t even like cooking? Maybe you like to make one-pot meals because you enjoy socializing, but not the cooking? Awesome! You’ve just learned something about yourself and you can really own that part of you!
Or you will reaffirm that this is in fact very important to you and then you will start to make conscious choices differently in order to reach that goal.
It is simple, but it’s not always easy. And that’s the difference between setting goals and reaching them.
If you’re unsure of how to take your goals from conception to reality, consider signing up for my 5-day email course, Your Life, Planned. I will show you in practical, bite-sized pieces how to use a planning method to reach your goals. It’s free, with no commitment! I hope to join you in your inbox to make your journey just a bit easier! The course is available now!
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