We’ve all been there: a blazing start, great intentions, and solid determination. Then, in a few days, or if you are very determined, a few weeks in, things slow, sputter, and stop.
Our efforts to make a positive change for ourselves simply dissolve in the face of everything we have to do to simply get through the day or the week.
Finding the Target
I get it. I’m simply miserable at maintaining support for my physical health. In talking with a health coach recently, I saw a pattern: if I set a specific time and day, I’ll miss, and then I stop. It’s the perfectionist in me. However, I learned that sometimes, vague targets are easier to hit (yes, I can actually hit the broad-side of a barn, thank you).
In many of my newsletters, I’ve shared ideas and processes that take time, thought, and consistency. But, in the current environment, there are many distractions, worries, and pressures that will interfere with the best of detailed schedules or efforts to do things consistently.
The Way Forward
If you have, like me, found your intentions flailing or missing, then the more flexible approach can be your new way forward. Instead of detailed, specific goals, set intentional guides and open plans (twice a week, when I shower, while I’m driving to….). Allow yourself room to reset when you’ve found the day too much.
This isn’t an “I’ll do it tomorrow”, where tomorrow never gets here. Instead, it is permission and support to see each day is whole, complete, and as it needs to be that day. The next day, we do again what is possible, and stretch where and how we can to grow – because we have learned from all the previous days we have already experienced.
Permission for Progress
So, have things fallen off for you? Have you felt your goals, efforts to get ahead, and your ideas slipping away? They are still there. Give yourself permission, support, and grace to pick them up again now, and nudge them forward, if even just a little.
Progress in inches while in a storm can be more amazing and powerful than miles on a sunny day.
Love, and until next time.
