When you are trying to attain a goal, whether it be a one time goal, or establishing a habit, your successes and failures are bound to look like a roller-coaster. Some days or weeks (maybe even months) will seem to be getting better and better, and then sometimes you will hit one of those steep downward slopes where your heart is in your throat and you can’t even scream your going so fast. Then, eventually you even out and you can start the climb back up. The trick is to make the downward slopes as short/small as possible, and to overall have an upward moving ride.
I had a bit of experience with this the last two days I thought I would share. Yesterday, when I woke up, I could see it was light outside and I thought – Oh good, its morning and its beautiful. I then promptly fell back asleep. Hey, I think that is a small success because I thought how nice it was in the morning, even if I went back to sleep. Today however I didn’t want to get up at all. I know that this is because I stayed up WAY later than I should have last night. I didn’t want to run, and didn’t get up to do so. When I did get up at 7 I had two options. Feel bad that I didn’t go running at 5:30 and try to get myself out to run, or just move on and come in to work. I picked to move on. Coming in to work later would have made my whole day seem a ton longer, and I would have been in a crummy mood. This way I get right to work – look past the mistake, and get back to what I should be doing. I will still go running this evening (about 2 miles I think), and then tomorrow I will run again.
One problem we can face as we hit the downward slopes is that we get discouraged. This only allows us to slope down even quicker. Although missing the opportunity, or failing in some way is not good, being too negatively effected by it is actually counter productive to our overall goal as it can lead us even further away from where we want to be. When you hit a rough patch, think “Well, I could have handled that a bit better.” and MOVE ON. You can’t change it, you can only change how you react to similar situations in the future. If you want to be able to achieve hard things in life, you have to be willing to let go of the mistakes (big or small) and celebrate any successes as you get them.
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