It’s Monday, the start of the third week of January. Are you still on track with your tasks that you set out to achieve on the path to your goals? Most if not all people have missed the mark in some way shape or form by now. Depending on your goals you might have eaten something that you were not going to eat or you didn’t hit the quantity of calls you said you were going to make and the list goes on.
Either way looking back is not going to help stay on track to hit your goals. Staying motivated after the luster and excitement is gone can be tough. For most people, when they begin to veer from the path that will take them to their goals, they begin to suppress the goals because they don’t want to face the pain of saying I failed already. They want to forget that they ever wrote those goals in the first place because not acknowledging them is the “easy way out”.
If you are not ready to throw in the towel just yet here’s something you can do to get back on track.
Failing is part of the learning process. It will happen in every venture you take on the way to your dreams. You have to accept it as part of the process. I know it’s hard. Look, the reason I’m writing this today is because I already missed one of the tasks that I said I would do 6 days a week for the entire year.
So I spent my Monday morning reflecting. Initially pissed off and then I realized, I’m human and so are you. You can’t beat yourself up when this happens. You are not machine, a programmed robot that performs at 100% for every hour it’s plugged in. You and I are going through life where the map to the finish line is a little unclear. I know what the finish line looks like, I have envisioned that enough times in my head, I just have a hard time with all of the obstacles along the way.
If the obstacles are standing in your way today or you have missed the mark already here’s what you can do to get back on track and stay on track.
- Don’t dwell on the failure. It’s not going to help you accomplish anything by beating yourself up over something that is already behind you.
- Pull out your goals and envision your life as if you already have them. This will help your mind remember all the reasons you are on this journey in the first place.
- Get your head back in the game because your team needs you. You can’t stay down when you focus on the future. You have to focus on the task at hand and work on accomplishing what it is you need to do today. Use the present and forget the past.
When I was in junior high I had a baseball coach I really loved, Dave Marshall. In the movie, A League Of Their Own, Tom Hanks plays a baseball coach who reminded me a lot of Dave. Dave was always a little rough around the edges. One afternoon I had got up to bat early in the game with men on 2nd and 3rd with no outs and I struck out. I was livid. I was the number 3 batter and I let my team down. I had been in a bit of a slump for a couple games. The rest of the team left those guys stranded as well so coach Dave was not very happy either. After the inning was over I was heading back to the mound and Dave stopped me on his way back from coaching 3rd base. He asked, what happened? I told him the obvious, I struck out. He said that’s pretty obvious but why? I went through a list of excuses and finally said, I guess I wasn’t focused on the ball. He asked, have you struck out in the past? I’m like come on coach, I’ve got to warm up, you know I’ve struck out in the past. Why are you rubbing this in? Then he asked when I struck out in the past was that in between the times that I got hits? I began to realize where he was going and replied yes. Then Dave just said then let that strike out be in between your last hit and your next one. I had never looked at a strike out like that before and that quick my head was back in the game. The next time up at bat I can remember thinking to myself this is my next hit. My mind was focused on the hit, the task at hand and not the slump. I got a double and my slump was over.
The simplistic wisdom in coach Dave’s statement when it applies to life is profound. You will strike out, you will fail, you will stumble and have roadblocks but those are all in between successes as long as you get your head back in the game and focus on the task at hand.
You’ve got this. That failure, however big it was, is in between successes.
If you are having trouble getting everything done you really need to get my free course, The One Week Time Miracle because it will quickly allow you to be more productive with the time you have. You can get it by clicking here.
Remember, you are only one customer away.
To your lifelong prosperity,
David Mulvaney