Best Laid Plans

The sun had just risen over the trees, bathing the dewy grass with its warmth as we disembarked the vehicle. My bff/coach began to outline the route for me. We had been progressing well towards our fitness goals and today she had set us an ambitious target. Over an hour later we had completed our best run in a while and we were pumped!

The problem is, this was also us same time last year January. But somehow it didn’t last. By the time December rolled around we were both feeling like BFDBs (Big Fat Dirty Bastards). It wasn’t for lack of planning or commitment. Because I must confess, my name is Matik and I’m a goal setting junkie. Every year I go through an intense goal setting process and it fuels my focus for the rest of the year. Still, my fitness was my biggest loss in 2018. And it sucks! So what happened? My Google Maps 2018 timeline says it all. I was hit by a crazy work travel schedule and I was hit hard! I’m a creature of habit and the constant disruption in my routine and eating habits completely threw me off.

So, it’s January again…. Time to make resolutions or if you are like me,set goals, and I’m thinking, “How can I avoid a repeat of 2018?”

So, I did a root cause analysis and I figured out what the problem was…When I was setting my goal, I did not take into account that I would have totravel so often. This phenomenon is the ultimate derailer of plans! We set goals assuming certain conditionsbut as the year progresses those conditions often change; conditions which wedid not plan for!

There are two things we can do to combat this (none of which I did in2018, which my scale can attest to):

1. Brainstormpossible barriers for every goal we set and what we could do to surmount them.
2. Even so, wewon’t think of everything, so we need to be able to re-assess and adjust ourgoals and plans when circumstances change. Stop and recalibrate.

Sometimes what we learn from our failures is more valuable than our victories. I hope this short lesson in goal-setting taken from my 2018 failure will help you to achieve all your wildest dreams in 2019 and beyond!

Joyfully,