Best Laid Plans - Dealing with Those Days That Might Set You Back
Best laid plans...
Newsflash! In a shocking turn of events, life does not always go as planned. Sometimes the immediacy of life swamps your mission and execution on your big goals. Today was such a day for me.
It began at 4 a.m. with our elderly dog Mia barking me awake to go out. She's about to be 15 and so she sleeps downstairs in her kennel these days. Half an hour later my head hit the pillow again for, hopefully, a couple more hours sleep. Less than 30 minutes later, now out of her kennel, Mia came in nudging me to go out. I put her off a few minutes too many and I had an accident on bedroom floor to clean up.
My brother is in town, so we got around, went to breakfast, and stopped at the craft store for April on our way back. Then I went with my brother to get him a new phone and a new computer. I'm the "tech geek" in our family, which doesn't bode well for us.
We arrived home about 1:30. I ate some lunch and then was ready for an afternoon nap. I awoke at 5 p.m. wondering where the heck my Saturday - by big day to get things done on my goals - had gone.
Tomorrow I've got a day job project to finish, taxes to complete, and we're going to go spend some time with some friends north of the city. I don't see me working on anything personal tomorrow. I have to do our taxes.
As I'm writing this very blog and eating, a piece of a tooth just broke off. And, of course, today was Day 6 of my 10-day Soda detox. Move over, Job, you’ve got some competition.
Now, I'm not telling this story to make you feel sorry for me. I'm glad my brother came to Boston. I'm glad Mia is still alive and kicking and that I get these special late days with her. It's wonderful to have friends. Taxes to pay means you are fortunate enough to have steady work.
The thing is, though, weekends like this put you behind on your big goals. It's easy to feel cheated out of needed time to work on the things that fire your soul. You feel like the universe is working against you or you're wearing off some cosmic karma.
I've experienced it before, and I'll bet you've had weekends or days like this too. What can we do?
Power hack: When you have days like this, you have two choices. You can use it as a reason to just give up and back away from your goals or you get more determined to be the person you came here to you be. You get up tomorrow morning with a smile on your face, put your best foot forward, and take the next step on the journey of a thousand miles.
That's my plan. That's always my plan. I hope, when you have days like that, it's your plan too. Obstacles are nothing but shortcuts to something better than you had planned!
Stay inspired!
Ray