In 2019 I made the decision to take my health seriously. I set goals and started working hard on them. I found a CrossFit gym that I loved and switched up a lot of my food for healthier choices. The best part was… I was actually being consistent!
I was so excited about how healthy I was feeling, when one Friday evening I started having abdominal pain.
Early the next morning I ended up in the emergency room and was hospitalized for over a week while they ran tests trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I was finally ushered into surgery.
When I came out of the surgery the doctors informed me that I would need a second surgery after I recovered from the first one.
I was so disappointed. I had worked really hard and now I was being told I could not even step foot in a gym for at least 6 weeks, no lifting weights for 10 weeks and once I was fully recovered I was going to have to do it all over again.
In total it was about a 5 month set back in my goals.
All of the progress that I had made prior to these surgeries was lost and my stomach was the weakest it had ever been.
Has this ever happened to you?
You are on track working hard to achieve your goals and stay on routine when out of nowhere something happens that completely messes up your schedule.
The kids get sick, work gets busy, Holiday Season, etc… Life just keeps getting in the way.
I call this getting derailed.
Just like a train headed to its destination when suddenly one of the tracks comes loose and the train falls off the rails.
Life is not an uninterrupted train ride from destination to destination. It is full of many twists and turns.
Everyday we face unexpected circumstances that can derail us from our goals.
So how do we ever achieve anything if we keep getting derailed?
So your kid gets sick and you can‘t work on your business that day.
This is just the way life is sometimes. But when your child is all better and back to school you need to get right back at your business.
Once we get derailed it is easy to make excuses to stay off track.
“Well just one more day and then I will get back at it”.
“It’s almost the end of the weekend so there is no point in starting back today, I’ll just get back on routine next week”.
Do these sound familiar?
Having your routine thrown off for one or two days can catapult you into a downward spiral that can last weeks and in some cases months if you keep making excuses?
Getting derailed is hard, it interrupts our routine.
We can make it much worse though by taking longer than we need to get back on the tracks.
Taking a long time to get back on track can put us in a rut, make us have to start over completely because we have lost all the progress we made, or cause our goal to take so long that we eventually give up.
Derailments can easily look like a perfectly packaged gift in the form of an excuse to “take a break” or “quit” for a while.
Be careful not to fall into the “excuse” trap.
Life is fluid and always moving and changing so we need to be adaptable with it. We need to know how to get on and off the track quickly.
The best leaders know how to accept derailments and jump right back into their winning routine as soon as possible.
I know that it sounds crazy to plan for an interruption, but you can look ahead at your schedule and anticipate more than you realize.
Do you have a Holiday coming up? Is there a really busy season of work about to take place? Do you have family coming in town to visit?
By looking ahead and anticipating these interruptions you can create a winning game plan ahead of time.
If you know that your kid’s spring break is next week, then plan ahead and create a strategy that will let you fit your goal into their Spring Break.
When life throws you off of routine staying on track with your goals won’t just happen. You have to plan for it and make it happen.
Sometimes we have to be creative to fit our goals in, but we can do it.
I had a goal last year to read 1 book per month. My plan was to read every evening.
With 2 kids it was rare that I had time to sit and read, the interruptions were endless. So I decided to start bringing a book with me everywhere I went.
I realized that I spent a lot of time just waiting in the pick up line at school that I could be reading. I spent hours each week sitting at soccer practice so I started reading then too.
Every time I found myself waiting; at a doctor's office, dentist, anywhere I would just pull out my book and read.
At the end of the year I ended up reading 4 books per month.
We can achieve so much more than we realize if we look ahead and make creative adjustments along the way.
It is always nice when plan A works out perfectly for us, but let’s be real, how often does that actually happen?
You need to have a back up plan/s ready and waiting for you so you can make a quick and easy adjustment to your goals when necessary.
An example for this might be:
I know that Tuesday I have a field trip with my daughter’s class so I will not be able to go to the gym like I usually do.
Plan B: Choose to workout at home later that evening after the field trip.
Plan C: Wake up early and workout before we leave for the field trip.
If plans B and C just can’t happen then...
Plan D: I will be sure to get back into the gym on Wednesday and not let myself fall off the wagon just because I missed Tuesday. At least I am getting right back at the gym and not missing two days in a row.
REMEMBER: No Excuses!
If you are only willing to work on your goal when all the stars align perfectly then you will never reach it.
Have a back up plan/s in play.
We need to respond to life by becoming master improvisers and adaptors so that we don’t get completely off course every time there is a hiccup in our plans.
Speaking of derailments.
When I finally started healing after my surgeries and getting back at the gym it wasn’t long until Covid hit!
This time though I did not let myself stay off track.
I changed my plan from going to the gym everyday to working out in my garage. I didn’t have a whole lot of equipment, but I had enough to get my heart rate up and build some strength.
It was hard motivating myself to workout alone in my garage, it was hard to come up with unique exercises with only a few pieces of exercise equipment. But I came out of quarantine healthier than I started it and I am now building on that.
Let’s stop complaining and making excuses and getting stuck when our train falls off the tracks and let’s realize that life is full of interruptions but we can get back on track quickly and keep going.
You got this!