You’ve set your goal, you’re so excited about it, you picture yourself achieving it, you’re making progress towards it and then, all of a sudden, something gets you off track and suddenly you’re going sideways off the path instead of towards the goal. You hit a goal challenge. We’ve all been there and will probably all be there again at some point. Whether you went sideways because you lost motivation like when you start a super restrictive diet or if it was due to something outside your control like a popped car tire when you just started saving money. The path to achieving your goals isn’t always a straight path and it definitely isn’t always easy, but the important thing is what you do when you encounter the obstacles. Things don’t always go as planned and when life gets in the way of your goals do you give up or keep going? Think back on your goal, why it was important to you in the first place, and why you still want to achieve it. Then realize that if you don’t keep going, restart, or get back on the path, you won’t achieve it. Here’s 6 ways to regroup and keep working towards your goal when life gets in the way.
1. Recognize when you aren’t moving forward toward your goal anymore.
2. Take a deep breath and know that it’s ok. Sometimes life gets in the way. Instead of beating yourself up for not reaching the goal or for not reaching one of your smaller steps towards your goal know that you are normal and if it was easy to achieve your goal you wouldn’t have had to make a goal. Goals are supposed to be challenging. Just because you went sideways doesn’t mean you can’t achieve it.
3. Take a step back and decide if you still want to achieve the goal. If something has changed and your goal is no longer important to you then go ahead and make a new goal that aligns better with what you want. If your original goal is still important, decide how to get back on track. Can you go back to your original steps toward your goal and extend your timeline to complete the goal? Do you need to brainstorm new ways to reach the goal based on what you’ve found challenging so far?
4. Once you’ve determined which goal you’re working toward- whether it’s the new goal or the old one, make sure you have an action plan for smaller steps to take to achieve the goal.
5. Think about what happened to make you go sideways and try to brainstorm what you can do next time to avoiding getting off track or to get back on track more easily.
6. Restart. Begin working towards your goal again. Think about how amazing you’ll feel when you achieve your goal and why you set the goal in the first place. Know you can reach your goal and just keep working towards it.
If you don’t come across any challenges when you try to achieve a goal you’ve made the goal too easy. There are going to be challenges as you work towards your goal and what’s important is the fact that you keep going. You might have to restart once or maybe it’s 5 times, but if you don’t restart and keep going then you won’t achieve your goal. Think about why you set the goal and how good you’re going to feel when you achieve it and keep pushing through. Comment below to share your success.
I think car issues and house issues are the biggest derailments to budgets. Very quickly you can end up with an expensive problem that needs to be fixed ASAP. see also- when I blew out my tire on the highway which led to me being told I needed four new tires immediately. UGH. and let’s not forget my 5k sewer line fix disaster. I think I need to budget for “disaster money” or I guess an emergency fund to deal with these unexpected issues. Then I don’t feel stressed filling into savings to cover them.
Definitely true. Those items are unexpected and can certainly be expensive. I had a screwdriver go through my tire this year. Not a screw, a screwdriver. That was the first for the tire shop and needless to say I purchased one more new tire that day than I had been planning to. Thankfully I had an emergency fund and didn’t need to dip into savings or carry a credit card balance to replace it.