Do you set goals, decide to achieve something, make plans and start out great but over time find yourself discouraged because somewhere along the way you got “off track” and didn’t end up where you were aiming for? Or you give up because you found you just weren’t staying with it?

We all struggle with this. Really, we do – everyone. We start diets, we start exercising, we start to hunt for that job we really want, we start working on bringing more balance into our lives, we start on the path to finding what we might do that has more meaning to us, but somewhere along the way we get off course and lose momentum. Before too long, we find ourselves back where we started from, except now we feel discouraged with ourselves for letting our focus slip.

There seems to be something innately human about this pattern. Those people who ultimately achieve success at something are not necessarily the brightest or even the best at their selected pursuit. Quite often they are the ones that kept getting themselves back “on track”, the ones that didn’t give up even when they lost momentum.

It’s easy for us to berate ourselves for losing focus in our pursuits, perhaps even easier to give up the pursuit altogether than to rally ourselves back into action. Some of us use these small missteps to illustrate how and why we “can’t” succeed. We measure our self and success by our perceived failures in our struggle with this difficulty. We let it become an element describing our character.

One of the very cool things about life is that as long as our minds are healthy and willing to learn, we are able to learn. Learn new ways of being, new skills, and knowledge. We can learn to overcome our struggle with staying “on track.” We can embrace the changes required of us to learn to find our way back to our path and continue on the journey towards our goal even when we have wandered away in distraction. This is what matters. What we are able to learn, how much we are able to grow. How we are able to get back onto the path.

Stop focusing on how many times you’ve fallen “off track”, off your diet, off your exercise plan, off the direction to finding a better job. Instead learn from these experiences and place your focus on getting back “on track”. Don’t judge yourself for the slip, correct it, learn from it and realize that what really counts is that you come back to the path. You may slip again, but as long as you come back to the path, you are likely to reach your destination – as long as you continue to redirect yourself and keep going.

Here are some tips:

1. Take it one day at a time. Or maybe one step at a time. Just focus on what you need to do in each moment to keep yourself moving toward your goal.

2. Break it into smaller pieces. It's easy to get overwhelmed with a task, a project, a goal that seems so huge that it's too much to manage or imagine accomplishing. Break it into smaller tasks and plan out or decide what you will do each day, or week.

3. Keep your desired outcome in mind. Visualize it. Imagine your goal accomplished. See yourself having completed it. Place visual reminders of what it will look like around you - photos, notes, quotes. Make it your intention.

4. Manage your inner critic. You know who I'm talking about. That voice that says "I can't" or "I'll never get it done" or any number of other negative thoughts that pop up to sabotage your progress. We ALL have this voice. Learn some techniques to silence it and keep you moving in a positive direction.

Whatever path, task, goal or project you feel you’ve gotten off-track from, forget about your digression and pick yourself back up. You CAN do it. Start this day anew. However many attempts it takes, in the end it will feel great to accomplish the result.

© Susan Harrington
http://www.susanharrington.com