Handling Setbacks

Is there something coming up in your life that might bring up strong emotions? There's something coming up, which is my husband coming home. Having a big life transition come up, it can definitely cause a lot of fear of the unknown. A lot of worry. There's a really big decision that's coming up that's out of my control. When we are thinking about our overall goal, it can be really helpful to think through the steps as to how we want to achieve that goal, and this is called setting a plan. If it doesn't at all go well, then I feel like the tools I have are to take the time to worry, worry, worry for 20 minutes, and then spend some time with the solution. The thing about a plan that it can be really helpful is we can think forward about any potential hurdles, or barriers that could come into our way and how we would want to handle them. Things begin to look bleak if I think about this setback, low mood sets in, you know, it's almost impossible to imagine what life would look like if this setback happens. Planning for setbacks really allows you the flexibility to keep your goal in mind, and keep your progress moving forward. There are tools and ways that I can outfit my life to be prepared not only for this setback, but maybe for anything. Things may happen and shift and I'll have to pivot, and that's okay. Like as long as we still get to the goal, or we may get to somewhere else that's really wonderful and our goals may change because change is constant and it's okay. One of the potential downsides of not planning for a setback could be that you get completely derailed. Some signs that I might be going backwards in this process would probably be avoidance, probably a little bit too much space and trying to, you know, avoid even discussing it or too much solitude. When we plan for a setback to the best of our ability, then we're more likely to maintain our motivation, and keep ourselves moving forward. Now we're gonna go through an exercise to help you plan for possible setbacks. We all wanna keep up with the healthy habits we start, so we're always looking for the secret sauce that shows us how to do that. Sometimes when we're planning, we want things to go so perfectly that we find ourselves thinking about worst case scenarios. Like what if things don't work out? Or what if something sets me back? Of course we're going to have setbacks, and of course things won't always go perfectly. We need to remember that setbacks are an expected part of any journey, no matter how big or small, and we can learn a lot from them. So the first thing we should do is learn how we'll cope with them. Like the weather, the future can be unpredictable. Sometimes...