It is day 9. Can you believe it? Well, I can, and I’m guessing that either today or tomorrow your sneaky little inner saboteur is going to try to pull some shit.
I’ve been there–boy have I ever, both personally AND professionally. I remember working so hard to become a psychotherapist, having my beautiful office space, seeing countless clients, AND pulling over on the side of the road with panic attacks on my way to aforementioned beautiful office. I came face to face with one of the biggest WTF moments in my life.
How could it be that the career I wanted so badly and worked so hard for was burning me out?
How could I have put all that time in, just to arrive at the job and think, “get me out of here”?
It’s one of the hardest realizations–when what you worked so hard for and wanted so badly is no longer checking all your boxes.
What do you do when you’re face down in the dirt and wishing you were anywhere but in the life that you had worked so diligently to create? This was me. And the only person who could save me was going to be me. I had to take a step back from all that I had built and reevaluate who I was, what I wanted, and most importantly, where I was going forward in my future because staying stuck wasn’t going to work.
I began to ask myself the right type of questions that help us to grow and get out of our own way. Through answering these strategic questions, I was able to find a detour for every roadblock, and you can too.
First, let’s brainstorm. Write down the top 5 things that are likely to take you out of this challenge. Tell on yourself. If you are trying to lose weight, is it the candy in your kitchen that is going to do it? Tell on your family! If you are trying not to yell at your spouse for a week, is it their messiness that is going to set you off? Tell on your boss or any person or circumstance that is going to get in your way, list those things below…
Now, take those 5 items, and come up with workarounds for them… we’ll call them your solution set.
If candy in the kitchen is the problem… lock it in a box for the week. If laundry on the floor is the problem, get a bigger laundry bag and vow to drop it off at the cleaner’s when its full… remember… these workarounds don’t NEED to be permanent solutions, they just need to be there to get you across the finish line THIS TIME.
Having a solution set keeps your eyes on the prize. It enables you to anticipate all of the hangups that are going to get you stuck, and it gets you ready to dodge them, and come out on the other side successful.
