What to do when your plans don’t work out
As you work towards your goals, here is one way to treat yourself with more compassion.
When we plan for the future, our tendency is to imagine a simple and straightforward path. You imagine the steps you’ll take toward your goal, how they’ll flow smoothly from one to the next, and how that will lead to the result that you hope for.
Unfortunately, as we all know, that’s not the way things go in real life. It sometimes seems like achieving a goal is anything but simple and straightforward!
If we were kinder to ourselves, it wouldn’t be a big deal. You would pause, try to learn from it, and then move on.
Instead, here's how most of us react:
You compare your human self to your imagined perfect plan.
You are very cruel to yourself: this proves you are not good enough and this is the evidence that you’ll never be able to change and this shows that you are utterly flawed (just as you suspected!)
This cruelty is very painful. It affects your self-confidence, courage, and determination. It demotivates you.
You want to stop trying or quit.
You can break this cycle.
Start here: you are a human being. That means you will mess up. You’ll feel bored with your goal. You’ll wonder if you really want it or not. Some days will feel like a huge drag. Other priorities will arise on a regular basis: your kid will get sick, your mom needs help, the roof starts to leak. There will be times when you are tired and need a break.
Stop treating your humanity like it is a liability, when it is actually your greatest source of joy.
Here are three ways to put this idea into practice:
Incorporate reality into your plans: Your humanity is not a flaw to fix, but a reality to consider. If you accepted yourself as you are, how would you plan to achieve this goal?
If thing don’t go as planned, use a mantra: Catch yourself before you beat yourself up and say these words to yourself: I don’t need to be controlled — I need to be supported. What would support you most in this moment?
Draw on your humanity as a source of strength: We humans have our flaws, yes. But we also have many gifts, and one of them is our incredible ability to get up and try again tomorrow. When things don’t go as planned, you don’t need to make a new plan. Just pause, try to learn from it, then wake up and try again.
