Rocks in the road

Two steps forward, one step back. It’s a dance that we all do. The path you walk in your career, health, or development is never a straight and easy road. There are going to be times when you go backward. It’s how you handle those setbacks that will determine your ultimate success. You can happily go along your way, and something will go sideways. Let’s take your health as an example. You might have had a great month of working out 3 to 4 days a week. Your nutrition and calorie count are on point. And then you go on a trip. Travel always takes us out of our element. Our routines are disrupted. What you normally eat isn’t always available; if it is, the portions are huge. (And heavily salted!) Maybe you can't get your steps in, or there's no gym for a workout. Once you get back home, you realize you've blown your streak. Suddenly, you're "not doing well." What do you do?!?

?Nothing.

?Absolutely nothing.

OK. You do one thing. Get back into your routine from before the travel and march ahead. We can only control what we can control. Accept whatever took you out of the groove. Get back onto the successful path. Nothing can set you back for long if you do that. We humans tend to beat ourselves up too long. We undermine ourselves. We have a setback. Giving in to the temptation to feel sorry for ourselves (or angry and disappointed!) for the setback is what causes us to really crash.

Certainly, recognize the stumble. Assess the causes and try to mitigate them next time. But, goodness, don’t spend too much time on the ground. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start on the path again. Quickly. I’ve learned to change my perspective on going after goals. Yes, a goal is a finite attainment. Whether that’s a degree, target weight, or position, there are mile markers you can point to for progress. But the real trick is to see progress in this life as a journey, not a destination. That shift allowed me to not fret too much about the occasional setbacks. Yes, those shortfalls took me a bit further away from a goal, from a key marker. But they don’t take me off the path. See, the path is more important. Your trajectory should be your focus. Keep yourself headed in roughly the right direction consistently. That should be the focus. In that way, you can dust yourself off and overcome most of the challenges and failures that inevitably will come your way.

?You've got this!