5 steps to get back on track when life tries to derail you

We’re four months done with the year and things are getting a little bit boring in respect of pushing through with your goals, right? We’re all churning along with the same old goals we set in December/ January, still striving to figure out some stuff, and if you’re in South African, no loadshedding but plenty (PLENTY) of power outages, water pipes bursting and depending on solar like it’s your lifeline (it is!). Or you’re being majorly derailed. I wrote a few weeks ago about me breaking loose with my decluttering projects.

I had some very clear health goals and guys, I’ve lost only 1.3 kg in 4 months. That’s it. My iron meets the doctor’s expectations but the cholesterol still needs work (my view is it’s the red meat I’m forcing myself to eat two to three times a week because I hate kale and spinach more…).

These two examples are not unusual, by the way; I just conveniently forget about the slump every year until I notice the pattern. You see, it’s not a matter of if you will be derailed, but rather, what will derail you.

I like to think like this – if you know that on the way to your goals, you will encounter 5 obstacles, then in your head, your expectations are managed, and it’s a “oh right, here’s obstacle 1, and here’s obstacle 2” instead of “oh my gosh, I’m a failure, why did I set this stupid goal, why did this happen to ME, I can’t do it, etc.”

5 steps to get back on track

  1. Identify the symptoms

Are you feeling tired, demotivated, frustrated or overwhelmed? Great! These are the indicators that you need to be aware, notice and most probably shake things up.

2. Get very clear on the why for your goals 

Do you still want to go after your goal? Why? (my health kick – yes! but maybe I can let loose a little on the decluttering since I have done a lot and it’s been a way of life for years so I am unlikely to stop at this point)
If you don’t want that goal anymore, here’s your big, fat permission slip to stop and change things.

3. Get clear on your derailers

Here’s where James Clear and his Atomic Habits book shine.
If you can’t seem to make progress on your goal, it’s time to analyse your behaviour. Are you derailing your efforts because you don’t pack a work lunch? Or you can’t seem to do your monthly savings goal because you’re out for a long and boozy supper every week with friends? Should you rather change into your gym clothes at work (yes, at work) and drive straight to gym instead of going home first? Which micro steps can you take to put you back on track? If you’re not sure, or you need someone to brainstorm with you, I can be that person.

4. Pivot

Expanding on 2 above regarding your permission slip, maybe you don’t want to stop your goal entirely? Maybe you just need to tweak the goal? I have slashed some things off my list (one – instead of 24 fun nights away/ in Jhb, I’m adjusting it to 12 as that seems to be the rhythm after the four months)

If you wanted to study and you missed the first semester deadlines due to finances/ couldn’t get everything to align, etc. maybe you sign up for the semester starting mid-year? If you’re not making good strides with something (me, the weight loss), change something (I am having a call with the Lovely Maureen, my Weigh-less group leader, who is the perfect combination of Compassion and Kindness, to bounce some ideas around).

5. Celebrate your successes

We all tend to look at what we have not done rather than what we are doing. Don’t forget to stop every month (better if you can do so every week) and count the things you did get done, whether they were on the list or not.Remember: we are not the things we do.

Have you done your goals review for April yet? Here’s a quick way to get that done using your Tendency.

A February recap of goals and letting things go

This month I thought I’d give you an update on my 23 goals in 2023 and talk about a project I am letting go.

#23goalsin2023

I think a good goals list has a mix of things you can do quickly, things that are a bit of a stretch and things that you need to continually do.

My 23 in 2023 list is exactly this and while I was only able to cross one thing off in January (7. Listen to one month of Let’s Read the Gospels podcast), I crossed off three in Feb and let one go.

This month’s wins

  1. I applied for and received my passport all in the same month. I’d heard that it takes 6 – 8 weeks but I received a text message 5 days later, which is beyond excellent.
  2. I have also now figured out a good laundry schedule (it is helped greatly when the sun shines!) and tested it for a whole extra month.
  3. I have also set up deep cleaning days and a schedule for what happens then. I booked an extra cleaning day! While it feels luxurious, I realised that I really like a clean house and I’d rather go without other things to have this extra help in place.  

Solar is not yet installed but I have followed-up; they have my application and I am on the waiting list. So exciting with us on stage 6 loadshedding.

What about that project I abandoned?

I had on my list to do #Gooutside23in2023 80% of the time.

Did you know that I hate being outside? The only time I like it is in winter, autumn when it’s cold, straight after it rains and when I’m at the beach. My body does not like the sun (heat headaches mentioned above) and mosquitoes love me. As I type this, I have mosquito welts all over my body from the days of heat we’ve been having.

So why would I put something like this on my list? Because I got caught up in New Year madness, that’s why.

I would love to be a person who likes being outdoors but I’m very much indoorsy.

However, I calculated that 3 days in office every week plus Zumba on Saturdays and church on Sundays equals 5 out of 7 days I get out of the house. 71% of the time will just have to do… and I’m no longer tracking it.

Do you need to abandon a project? Not that you need it, but here is your permission slip.

What were the month’s hits and misses for you in February?

{reflect} November…and how the Four Tendencies approach a monthly review

Just think about it – this is the last mini review of the month because the next monthly review is actually a big annual review. I can’t wait! If you’re not on my mailing list, make sure you’re on because I’m going to be sending out the 2020 goals planner during the first two weeks of December.

As I always say, even if you’re not the type of person who takes out a pen and bullet journal/ diary, I recommend you take 5 – 10 minutes just to think about how the month played out.

reflect

If December is generally busier for you as it is for most of us, feel free to start your annual review sooner.

Let’s talk about monthly reviews from each of the Four Tendencies’ viewpoints:

Upholder

Wants a clear framework of questions to reflect on and if built into their habits/ schedule, will go ahead and do the monthly review every month.

Obliger

Probably thinks it’s a good idea but won’t get to it every month unless a coach or friend holds them accountable. Obligers, consider me your friendly coach.

Questioner

Will review if they see the benefit for themselves and feels like the effort is worthwhile, but will not wait for the last or first day of the month.

Rebel

If the rebel feels inclined to do a review, will do it in the way, shape or form that they see fit, certainly not what I suggest in this post. It’s your choice, Rebels!

For those who would like some ideas of questions to ponder, here are some of my favourites:

  1. what went well this month?
  2. what did not go well?
  3. what energised me?
  4. what have I learned?
  5. how can I bring more fun into my life? or where do I need to be more serious?
  6. which projects do I need to let go?
  7. am I living out my word of the year? Do I already have an inkling for a word or theme of 2020?

Even if you just do the first 2 – 4, that’s a really good start to round off the month and step into the last month of the decade (!) on a good, solid note.

I don’t mind confessing that I’ve been reflecting on the year so that I have plenty of time, and so that it’s not all squeezed into the week after Christmas.

Do you do a monthly reflection? Did the Four Tendencies questions help you to understand yourself and those around you better?

PS The next Four Tendencies workshop will be held in Jhb on Saturday 8 Feb 2020. If you’re not local, I also do Four Tendencies coaching via Skype/ FaceTime.

My monthly recap for July

I’m smack-bang in the middle of birthday season at the moment, so I’m not going to wait for the actual end-of-the-month before doing my monthly recap.

As an aside, can you see how this Upholder is breaking loose?! The Four Tendencies deep dive course really helped me to clarify why I do things and question whether I want to continue doing them. When I figure out Instagram TV, I’m going to do a little video on my learnings from the course.

Moving along.

Let’s talk about my highlights for July

1. Our family beach holiday. We were in Ballito for a week and I read 5 books, got to nap on the couch one afternoon, watched Wimbledon, and took many many walks on the boardwalk. Also, something weird happens to my body at the coast – I wake at 6.20 every day (I would wake at 9.00 if left to my own devices in Johannesburg)  – so I got to watch so many sunrises.

2. I’ve read 10 books thus far. I should finish on 12 for the month.

3. I crossed off something from the house to-do list which was to put in a shower in the kids’ bathroom. It came about in a really standard way for me which is I became irritated with having a messy bathroom every day when I got home from work as the kids used to use my shower. Dion and I are both very neat in our bedroom/ bathroom so I asked for a quote, changed the hardware out once and then paid the deposit and the shower was done.

4. I’ve done all the birthday planning. Two parties down, Dion’s birthday on Friday and mine on the 6th with a lunch on Sat 4th. Last year we had both the twins’ parties on the same weekend – mayhem – so this year we had 1 per weekend. Of course it feels like I’m entertaining for 4 straight weeks (which I am) but it’s been a whole lot more manageable. I’m only two parties in, but so far so good.

5. And for work, I survived the year-end madness 🙂 I was also up to date two days after returning from leave which is a feat that I’m particularly excited about.

Noteworthy mentions of the organising kind

  • I made updated travel lists and have put them in an A5 flipfile right down to which little travel pouch to use for my bedside table stuff. I’m super thrilled about this tiny little task that took about 10 minutes because now I don’t need to THINK every time I travel. I will just whip out my little flipfile and follow my lists.
  • We used Uber for our holiday again and it was great.
  • I ran a little giveaway on Instagram for Mandela Day and while I thought there’d be a lot more people putting up their hands for a free coaching session, I only had 4 takers, which means those 4 get 17 minutes each 🙂

Tell me about your highlights and organising mentions this month.

This is how we feel about beach holidays 😉

 

May goals recap and what I need to let go of

I did some instastories the other day talking about my freebie monthly review form. In it I said that that you should only review the month after you answer all the other questions otherwise your memory is swayed by recent events and not a true reflection of the entire month. On instagram, click any or all of the round circles underneath my profile to see the stories. But do start with the teal one that says Monthly Review. And if you still don’t have the free printable, get that here.

It’s the same for me in May.

Before I sat down to do my review, I thought it was a so-so month because I’d just had a day on the weekend sick and “nothing got done”. I wonder if my body just needed to rest?


Anyway, I did my review and looked at my goals and realized …. it was one of my best months this year! 97% goals reached.

So there you are – real live goals action in progress.

The things that didn’t get done since I’m sure you’re curious? I read only 7 of the 8 books I’d planned, and only 1 of them was an audio book. And I didn’t make a Friday lunch date with Dion at his work. We’ll try again this month.

Now, onto our question of the month. What do I need to let go of?

The need to keep everything perfectly in order during busy times. Classic upholder/ enneagram 1 problem and I know this about myself. The trick is to keep reminding myself of that truth.

I made an autumn list with the 4 photowalks I wanted to take and I didn’t get to them. I got to only one on my list. BUT I had a wonderful photowalk when we were in the Drakensberg last month, took two photodrives (the photos in this post is from one of them – here is the other), and had a completely unexpected walk with a friend at the end of May. So I’m letting go of the self-imposed pressure to complete my autumn list.

What do you need to let go of as we step into June?

And how was your May? Was it better or worse than you thought? Have you downloaded your freebie printable yet?

5 things I learned in April

Yes, this post is late, but it’s always still worthwhile to reflect back on the month.

  • My new practice of taking some time on a Friday afternoon to write a ta-da list for the week ending and a goals for the next week is seriously changing my life. I feel accomplished and like I can completely shut off my mind from work until Monday morning knowing that I start focussed on Monday morning again.
  • It is not a coincidence that my most productive week in months was one where I worked from home 3 days. Clearly the office is good for my social life but not so good to be productive.

Oh right, this is the laptop that was stolen. My notebook and diary were also in my laptop bag 🙁

  • I learned that I’ve been out of the loop with grocery shopping so long that I no longer know what things actually cost but we have some good habits. A whole post coming up on the grocery spend insights next week 🙂
  • God is ever faithful. There was an intruder in the house this month and while 5 small items were stolen (the biggest being my work laptop), we were all protected and kept entirely safe. It’s still work to retrain your brain to live fearlessly though. The week after this happened I didn’t post anything – too busy dealing with life!

I consciously took this photo of beautiful trees against the sky outside the police station to remind myself that God is still a good God.

  • On this note, it is a huge pain dealing with insurance companies, so much so that my goal this month is to sort this stuff out as quickly as possible so I can live free again.

and a bonus…

I also learned that our holiday was planned (months ago) for exactly the right time. We needed to get away as a family and enjoy being together in an absolutely gorgeous part of the country.

How was your April? What did you learn?

March recap and in-progress projects

Wow, this month was something else.

I haven’t been as overwhelmed with work in a long, long time as I have been this month.

Picture this – working on a Friday and telling yourself, I’m now up to date with last Monday’s work (almost two weeks behind). Basically that kind of thing times ten. As you know, I’m an ESTJ, enneagram 1, and an upholder, so you now know this being behind business doesn’t sit well with me at all.

I’m not out of the woodwork yet – who knows when that will happen? – but I set myself 5 mini work goals and I achieved those, so I’m feeling satisfied with some progress at least.

I’m planning to do exactly the same every month so that even though things are crazy, I can still feel somewhat accomplished. I’m also sleeping well and exercising to take care of my body, and of course, doing all my tricks.

exhausted and depleted!

On the whole, if I look at my entire life, not just work, it was still a good month, but it didn’t feel that way, largely because we spend so much time at work.

There were many life-giving things though – books read (more on this next week), house projects, connections with friends and family, and lots of fun. And at the risk of being superficial, I got my hair done and coloured this month, so that is awesome, if expensive!

Have you downloaded the monthly review sheet from my site yet? It has 6 questions and an “on a scale of 1 – 10, this month was a ____” to help you review your month.

You can write one word answers or a whole paragraph – it’s completely up to you.

You don’t even have to use the printable if you want; simply copy the questions into your bullet journal.

I honestly find it to be one of the most helpful tools I’ve ever created, and I want you to enjoy using it too. I’m focusing on a different question each month in these blog posts although I do the full review privately.

One of the questions on the printable is Do I have any in-progress projects?

This month my in-progress projects are:

  1. tons of work things (there is literally not one client who is completely up to date with everything). To that end, my mantra is “I let go of the need to be completely up to date, and to process all client requests according to my self-imposed, currently hugely unrealistic deadlines”)
  2. insurance claim for a leak in my house due to heavy storms a week ago
  3. getting us all into a new nanny schedule (we’ve reduced her hours)
  4. sell table, etc.
  5. weeding in garden!

I am thrilled that all the upstairs painting is done. The rooms spark joy every time I walk into them. This feeling is what I need to focus on when I think of the mess of painting!

What are your in-progress projects? House? Life? Personal?

What went well in February?

Hello friends

I want to tell you something kind-of interesting.

lots of reading

 

I have 6 questions on my monthly review sheet and my intention is to use a different question as an example every month to show you how I use them.

Last month I answered the question “what energised me this month?” and this month I scheduled in just the blog draft title “what went well this month”?

Do you know? I haven’t had the best month. In fact, it’s been one of the more terrible ones in a long, long time.

Probably why I haven’t really felt like writing this post about what went well, because not much did.

Still, let’s see. There’s a reason I need to focus on what went well, so let’s do it 🙂

magnificent walk

What went well this month?

  1. I had 8 friend dates. That’s a lot, even for me, because two from January got pushed back. That was truly the highlight of my month.
  2. We had a wonderful book club last week – great discussion, lovely people, challenging and energizing.
  3. I took two wonderful walks (the goal was four) but at least they were picturesque and gorgeous!
  4. I walked more than 5000 steps 79% of the month.
  5. I read 8 books. I will tell you more about this next week because there were some lessons in there for me, and perhaps for you too?

That’s it.

Book club!

Of course I could probably make a list of 10 things that did not go well, and I have acknowledged some of the more important ones in my bullet journal, but I’m very glad to see a clean slate today now that it’s a new month.

Tell me what went well for you this month.

Things I’m loving lately

This is the last month of spring for us in the Southern Hemisphere and I must admit, it’s not been awful.

That’s in part due to some cooler weather we enjoyed this spring, and also in part due to the jacarandas which infinitely improve about 6 weeks of spring for me.

I told Dion recently that this is the first season where I have absolutely no regrets because I got all the photos of jacarandas I could possibly want. I pulled over in many different parts of Johannesburg to take pics, and took about 10 dedicated photo walks and even about 3 photo drives. That’s serious dedication for the cause of jacarandas 🙂

However, today I want to tell you about 5 things I’m loving lately:

Sterling Silver arrow studs

I can’t wear any costume jewellery no matter how hype-allergenic the piece is – my ears swell, itch and I have to throw the item away.

Recently I saw these earrings and bought them. I love them. I’m wearing the bars currently but the little arrows have had such a lot of compliments at work.

The Enneagram

This one needs a full post but I took an enneagram test recently on this site. Turns out I’m a 1. They say you know when you’ve hit it because you cringe when you hear the bad stuff and boy oh boy, I cringed. Anyway, I listened to a couple of podcasts (The road back to you) episodes where they interviewed 1s and yep, nailed.

Do you know your type?

My kids’ double bunks

We recently put the bunk beds next to each other in the kids’ room and not only do they love it, but I love it too. I can now take turns laying in bed with both of them (no way was I climbing to that top bunk).

Because of the room re-configuration, we had to move the bookcase out into another room so we took the opportunity to declutter some books – yay!

Leather ballerina pumps

I am very fond of flats. But I’m also a little but fussy in that I don’t want to see any toe crack, I don’t like too sharp a toe and I need a heel at least 5 mm.

These ones do it all.

Since I bought my pair nearly 4 weeks ago, I’ve been practically living in them 🙂

Loreal magic retouch spray

A friend told me about this magic spray and that it stretched her hair colouring from 3 weeks to 4 weeks. Clearly I’m a lot lazier because I spray this stuff for weeks and weeks 🙂

And now, please tell me what you’re loving lately – foods, clothes, products, pens, stationery, anything!

The quick and dirty monthly review

Monthly reviews are one of my life rhythms that I didn’t think I needed, but I love doing so much.

They force me to slow down and reflect on what’s been, instead of just racing ahead to the next thing.

I’m the type of person that’s always looking forward and while that’s mostly good, at times, I know I need to stop and enjoy what I’ve accomplished first before moving forward.

My monthly review helps me do that.

Over the years I’ve refined my process, and I ask myself 6 questions that you can find on a free printable here.

Suzanne Moore interviewed me on her podcast and we spoke extensively about that monthly review form and my process. Listen in here on itunes or stitcher.

Some months I make my process even longer (when it’s been a particularly busy or eventful or stressful month and I need to unravel it) and sometimes I do the quick and dirty version.

The quick and dirty monthly review process

1.In my bullet journal, I write down 4 questions:

  • what went well this month?
  • what could have gone better?
  • what did I learn?
  • what do I need to let go of?

2. Then I go make a cup of tea or do something totally different (pack lunch bag/ set out clothes, etc.) This gives my brain time to start thinking about the month.

3. I then return to my bullet journal and answer those questions. Because I’ve given myself a chance to have a quick think, the writing it all out is easy when I return.

bonus questions

  • how did I live out my word of the year?
  • do I have any in-progress projects to be carried over?

 


Tell me. Do you do a monthly review? If not, I’d like to challenge you to do one this month and see how you enjoy the process (or not!). Let me know what happens 🙂



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