What If You Fail In Your Diet Or Mediation Practice?

Of course it’s not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’. A month ago I failed at my goal of writing 30 blog posts in 30 days. I failed on day 25. The same with my daily meditation routine. Inevitably I drop out of the routine after 70 days max. What then?

First, there’s a bad feeling about it. I feel bad about myself for not being able to do what I planned. Sometimes it creates a feeling of low self esteem, etc. When this happens I need to stop to realise that in fact it is inevitable, unavoidable to fail in a long term habit like this. Life happens and not everything is within my control. It’s not all my fault.

Second, appreciate what you already did. Congratulate yourself on the good job you’ve done so far and appreciate what you already gained out of it. I benefited from those 24 published posts almost as much as I would benefit from 20.

Third, while I stopped I can think about the reasons. What happened that I fell out of my blogging routine? What can I improve going forward? So in case of my 30-day writing challenge the fault was I didn’t decide what I’m not going to do. I’m a busy person already and my schedule is filled to the brim. So the next time I’m committing to something like this I need to explicitly schedule it in my weekly calendar. Time is not made of rubber. This is possible if you have your priorities straight. Tha’s why I’m planning a new habit for that :)

Forth, and most important: get back into the saddle as quickly as possible. Failed at doing it regularly, every day? So what? Just start doing it again. This is huge because it applies equally to exercise, diet and working on any big and long term goals. Ironically I failed at this as well… It’s been a month since I stopped working on my 30 day writing challenge. It’s a failure within a failure ;) So what…

So what I’m going to do now, is I’m going to finish my 30 day writing challenge, summarise it and setup a new habit based on what I learned.

Photo by bar rocknwool.