Why Starting Over All the Time Is Making Your Goals Harder

I think there is something really appealing about starting over.

There is just something about a brand-new planner, a freshly written schedule, a new program, a new goal, or even a good old-fashioned Monday morning that makes us feel like, okay...here we go. This time I am going to get it together.

And sometimes we do.

Maybe you decide you're going to start walking after work, and you do it for three days before the week completely falls apart.

Maybe you find a planning system you love and use it pretty consistently for six weeks. Then you have a busy week and don't use it quite as much. The next week isn't much better. And somewhere over the next month or so, that planner slowly makes its way underneath a stack of papers on your desk.

You didn't decide to quit. There wasn't some dramatic moment when you threw your planner across the room and announced that planning clearly wasn't for you.

It just kind of...faded away.

And eventually you realize you aren't doing it anymore. So, naturally, you start thinking about starting again.

Maybe this time you need a different planner. Or a better routine. Or a new program. Or maybe that woman on Instagram who gets up at 5:00 a.m., drinks a gallon of water, works out, meditates, journals and apparently solves world peace before her children wake up has finally convinced you that mornings really are the answer.

I get it.

When you really want something to change, finding a new way to work on it feels productive. And I think this is where we can be way too hard on ourselves.

You are trying. Like, really trying.

When we talk about people struggling to reach their goals, I think we sometimes picture someone who just isn't doing anything.

That isn't who I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the woman who is reading the book while also listening to the podcast and who signed up for the webinar because maybe there will be something in there she hasn't thought of yet. She's talked about this with her friends. She's Googled it. She's made lists about it. She's tried.

Probably more than once.

And when the latest attempt doesn't turn into the permanent life change she was hoping for, she doesn't necessarily think about all of that effort or everything that happened along the way.

She thinks, Well. I failed at that too.

That's the part I want to talk about. Because what if you didn't?

Or, at the very least, what if "I failed" isn't the only thing there is to see?

Maybe you actually learned something

I think sometimes we hear advice about sticking with things long enough to learn from them and immediately assume that means we need to keep going longer.

And sometimes, sure. Maybe we do.

Sometimes we get three days into something, decide it isn't working, and immediately move on to the next shiny thing before we have any idea whether the first thing would have helped. I have absolutely seen a new idea and thought, Ohhhh. Maybe THAT'S what I need.

Most of us have.

But I also don't think there is some magical amount of time you have to stick with something before you're allowed to learn from it.

Maybe you did it for three days. Maybe you did it for six weeks. Maybe you were doing it for six months before it slowly disappeared.

You may have stayed with it plenty long enough to learn something. You just haven't stopped to notice what you learned because you're so focused on the fact that, eventually, you stopped.

If all you can see is I failed again, you're probably not looking at the three days when something actually felt easier. Or thinking about why weeks two through five worked so well. Or noticing that the routine started falling apart right around the same time your life got busier.

You're just looking at the end.

And the end isn't the whole story.

Maybe you learned that you actually like walking after work, but trying to do it five days a week doesn't fit your life. Maybe that planner really DID help you stay on top of things for six weeks, but it wasn't flexible enough when your schedule changed.

Before we throw all of that away and start from scratch, I want to know what was working.

That's useful information. Actually, that might be the information we need most.

We don't have to throw the whole thing away

This is one of the things I notice so often when we're trying really hard to make a change.

Something stops working and we immediately start rebuilding. We don't tweak Tuesday. We make a whole new weekly schedule. We don't ask what changed or what made the routine harder to maintain. We start looking for a different routine.

And again, I don't think we do this because we're flaky or unmotivated or incapable of following through.

I think we do it because we want it to work.

If I'm already frustrated that I'm not getting where I want to go and somebody hands me a shiny new map, of course I'm going to look at it. Maybe this map will finally get me there.

But before I toss the old one, it might be worth figuring out where it actually took me.

Because sometimes Tuesday was just a crappy Tuesday.

Sometimes the plan that worked beautifully in July doesn't fit once the kids go back to school. Sometimes your workload changes, your capacity changes, or life simply asks more of you for a while.

None of that automatically means the plan failed.

I think this is where our definition of consistency gets us into trouble. We tend to think consistency means finding the right thing and then continuing to do it correctly forever.

Real life is not particularly cooperative with that plan.

Sometimes consistency is simply staying with something long enough to collect some information about it.

And then we get to use that information.

Maybe we keep the parts that were working and adjust the parts that weren't. Maybe our circumstances changed and the plan needs to change with them. Maybe the goal itself needs another look.

Because sometimes we can work really, really hard toward something before realizing it isn't actually taking us where we want to go.

Maybe we're chasing the goal we thought we were supposed to want. Maybe we're trying to solve the wrong problem. Maybe we've learned enough along the way to realize that reaching this particular goal isn't going to create the change we were actually looking for.

Letting that go isn't a failure.

The goal here isn't to become someone who never quits.

It's being able to tell the difference between something that needs more time, something that needs an adjustment, and something that isn't serving where you're actually trying to go.

And that can be really hard to see when you're standing right in the middle of it.

This is one of the reasons support matters

I think this gets especially complicated when you're someone who is used to being responsible for a lot.

You show up. You take care of things. You are probably very good at making sure the things that absolutely have to happen somehow happen.

So when one of your own goals fades into the background, it isn't because you don't care about it.

You care a lot.

You're trying really freaking hard.

And when you're trying that hard, it can be difficult to step outside of everything long enough to see what is actually happening instead of immediately deciding that you are the thing that isn't working.

That's one of the things support can do.

Sometimes another person can listen to you explain why something "didn't work" and say, "Wait a minute. You just told me that this made your mornings easier for almost two months. I don't think we should skip over that."

Or notice that the plan didn't randomly fall apart—your life changed.

Or ask whether we really need another new plan, or whether this one just needs to fit your life a little better.

That's a big part of what coaching looks like with me.

I'm not sitting across from you waiting to catch you doing your goals wrong. And I'm definitely not interested in handing you another perfect system and then waiting to see whether you can follow it correctly.

I want to help you see what's actually happening.

Sometimes we need a different plan. Sometimes we need to make this one smaller or easier. Sometimes the shiny new thing really is distracting you from something that matters more. Sometimes we realize we're working toward a goal that doesn't fit where you actually want to go anymore.

And sometimes I want to point out that you are calling something a failure when I can see about twelve things you learned from it.

Because that's support too.

Maybe you don't need to start over

If something you've been working toward has gotten a little quiet lately, you don't have to declare it another failure. And you don't necessarily have to start all over again on Monday.

Because I don't think you've been starting from zero nearly as often as you think you have.

You have been trying things. Living your life. Learning what fits and what doesn't, even when you didn't realize that's what you were doing.

Maybe you don't need another fresh start.

Maybe you just need to stop calling everything that came before it a failure.