Have you ever had a goal, started taking action towards it, made great progress—maybe even met the goal BUT then life took over and you went backwards and maybe even ended up in a worse place than when you started to begin with? I have! In fact, multiple times on my health journey.
I am 53 and have struggled with weight all my life. I now look back at pictures from high school and am not sure why I believed I was overweight. I would feel pretty good to look like that again! Anyway, I digress. The truth is that I tried what felt like EVERYTHING to lose weight, get fit and feel better about myself. What continued to happen for me is that I would make progress or even hit my goals but each time I started I felt I was starting from scratch. What I have come to learn is that is NOT true!
Start from a New Place
Each time we begin refocusing on a goal area—it could be health, finances, career, relationships—we start from a new place because if we allow ourselves the space to reflect and absorb, we can actually learn something from our prior efforts. I work with many clients on their health goals, and they see amazing progress, yet sometimes life takes over and sometimes people revert to old habits/actions that take them further away from their goals.
There are several actions I believe are key as you begin to encounter the “slide” backwards.
Stop Negative Self-Talk
First, acknowledging what is happening WITHOUT self-shame. This one, historically, is hard for me! As soon as I would see myself slipping in the wrong direction, my self-talk would be negative and I would somehow convince myself I was a failure—in my case it was with my health. The outcome of that negative self-talk had a snowball effect leading me to continue to make decisions that were not aligned with where I wanted to get. The best thing you can do for yourself is to STOP the negative self-talk and REPLACE it with a different story, perhaps something like: “I am willing to learn from my mistakes and can still make progress toward my goal.”
Don’t Give Up
Next, don’t grant yourself permission—because you made one, two or maybe a few decisions that didn’t support your goal—to just give up for the day, the week, the month, etc.! Instead, acknowledge the choices you made, ask yourself WHY you made those choices and ask yourself if the choices helped you move toward what really matters MOST to you. What does this mean? Typically, you set a goal because it supports something that is important to you. It could be to eliminate your debt, to reduce your A1C levels, to strengthen the relationship with your spouse, to be able to conquer a difficult hike, to fit into that dress hanging in your closet. Whatever the reason behind your goal, it ties to something that mattered MOST to you. So, when you make a choice that doesn’t align, remind yourself what actually matters most to you and make the next best choice to align!
Share Your Goal
Another critical element, in my opinion, based on my own life journey and working with 100’s of clients, includes sharing your goal with someone and letting them know what actions you intend to take to move toward your goal. Ask them to help you by helping you see when you are making choices that don’t align with your goal. Sometimes this is a friend, spouse, co-worker, financial advisor, coach. It can also be multiple people. As a health coach, I am a built-in accountability person for my clients BUT I am not with them to see all their actions in the moment. I often suggest they enlist the support of a spouse or friend to help them. I understand that some people don’t want to share the goal they have with others, in my experience that is typically because they are still stuck in the self-shame phase mentioned above. Once you shift your story, it gets easier to share and ask for help.
Help Others
The last action that is helpful when you feel the “slide” happening is to look around and acknowledge others in your life that might be focusing on the same area. Lean in to see how they are doing, help them. Helping others in an area you are focused on in turn HELPS YOU! This is one major reason I am a health coach! I learn so much from my clients that helps me on my journey and supporting them also helps hold me accountable to what matters most to me – Being a Healthy/Fit Gigi so I can experience life with my FIVE granddaughters!
In summary, don’t shame yourself if you find yourself starting FRESH on the same goal you once had, instead change your story so you can apply all the things you have learned from the journey so you can make positive progress forward!
Peggy Norton is a health coach who is passionate about changing the health of our world, one person at a time. She is an experienced HR professional who reinvented herself by coupling her corporate background AND her personal health journey of losing over 100 pounds—thus rediscovering energy and self-confidence. Today, she is the active, involved Gigi she has always envisioned.
Great reminder!