Day 22 - Resetting The Sails

What do you do when you've set out to accomplish big things and you experience challenges, setbacks and utter derailments along the way?

That's something I've had to grapple with over the last few days as I have experienced both self-inflicted and outside challenges on the road to accomplishing my 79 day goals.

In the arena of self-inflicted challenges, I completely overcommitted myself with project work - not leaving enough margin to focus on the goals I established - which are more important in the big picture, but not quite as urgent!

In the arena of outside challenges, my father suddenly took a turn for the worse and passed away ... and in the days leading up to our unexpected trip to North Carolina for his funeral, my wife and 6 kids were all stricken with a very nasty stomach bug - leaving me as the 'last man standing' to clean up and help nurse everyone back to health.

However, even taking all that into consideration, I probably should have only lost 6 or 7 days out of the 79 days I've alloted for reaching my goals.  So, why did it take longer? What did I do to compound the challenges and make it harder to keep going strong? Faulty Thinking!

FAULTY THINKING #1 - Perfectionism - I KNOW ... these posts and my other projects are FAR from perfect. But, that doesn't keep me from 'noodling' with them and working and re-working them to death so that they wind up taking longer than they are probably worth and represent an overwhelming task when the 'squeeze' is on with the rest of life.

The Solution - Step up the volume and force myself to allow projects to leave my desk before I'm comfortable with them... AND, remind myself daily that mediocre execution beats perfectly undone any day!

FAULTY THINKING #2 - Self-Imposed Rules - When I first fell behind, I began thinking that I had to go back to where I got derailed and catch up on all those days of posts. So, the overwhelm of getting behind became more and more daunting with each passing day.

The Solution - Reframe my failure - I came up with the goals and activities in order to increase my service and value to others. They were put in place to help me grow. So, why would I use them to beat myself up instead? (It's a bad habit I've had since I was a kid and I'm finally trying to change that.)

Additionally, I need to reframe my view of temporary setbacks. Too often, I act as if they are like taking a wrong turn on a road where I have to backtrack to where things went wrong before proceeding. Instead, if I view the journey to my goals as a sailing expedition, I recognize that even when I am blown off course, I can simply set a new and more direct course to reach my goals based on where I am right now.

The good news is that some progress has continued to be made and, unlike some of my past failures, I didn't wind up giving up completely. Hopefully, by sharing all of this, others of you who may struggle with the same faulty thinking can find encouragement and help.

Meanwhile, I've reset my sails and charted an alternative course - still fully intending to achieve everything I set out to accomplish.

About This Chart: For those who haven't been following, I created this daily chart for the purpose of communicating and tracking some of my more important goals - publicly. You can read about it in THIS EARLIER POST.