When things don't exactly go according to plan

Happy Tuesday Friend,

Do you ever get frustrated when things go wrong?

Me too.

Yesterday I finally announced the details of the BIG project my team and I had been working on behind the scenes for what seems like forever—a brand new App for Thinlicious™ that is going to make life SO much easier for anyone trying to lose weight & get healthy.

I’m SUPER excited about it, but that’s not the point of this story.

You see, I was supposed to go live at 12pm on both Facebook and Instagram, and I’ll spare you all the boring details, but suffice to say technology did not cooperate. It wasn’t a total disaster, but it wasn’t what I had hoped for.

Then on Instagram, I’ve had so much activity on a few of my recent posts that my account got flagged and I can no longer leave comments, which means now I’m basically in Instagram jail. Wah wah wah.

But it’s not just work stuff that doesn’t always go as planned.

At home, my husband and I have been busily working on what sometimes feels like an endless list of projects, and sometimes it also feels like with every project we take two steps forward and one step back.

We put in a new light fixture but accidentally dropped the old fan while we were taking it down, which shattered glass everywhere and put a big gouge in our table. We ordered a new fridge for the guest house, but it was too big and we had to send it back and order a smaller one. We got a new rug for the front entry and the dog threw up on it just a few days later.

Can you relate? It’s frustrating isn’t it?

But the reality is, that’s LIFE.

It’s messy and imperfect.

And I’m sure if we sat down for coffee, you’d probably have a whole list of things in your life that aren’t going quite the way you were hoping they would either. Am I right?

So the question is, what do you DO when life doesn’t exactly go as planned?

Here are a few things that help me:

• Find the silver lining. And this might sound trite, but I don’t mean it to be, because this is actually a really big deal. What I mean is that there are very few circumstances that are ALL good or ALL bad, but that we often have a tendency, when something goes wrong, to slip into what’s called “black and white thinking.” Suddenly all we can see is the negative and everything is a disaster, and it’s all a mess, and there’s no point in even trying to continue. Has that ever happened to you?

  A healthier approach is to get intentional about spotting the nuance, and forcing yourself to also recognize the positive within the mess. (i.e. “Yes, we broke the old fan and had to clean up glass everywhere, but the new light fixture looks great!”) At the very least, there’s probably a valuable lesson in there somewhere. So take time to see the good.

• Regroup: Sometimes this just means taking a break and stepping away from whatever happens to be frustrating you in the moment. It’s amazing how often we’ll keep hammering at the same problem expecting different results, when what we actually need is a little space from it. It’s amazing how much perspective you gain when you take a step back.

• Extend the timeline: Have you ever noticed how we tend to give ourselves arbitrary deadlines for when we think something should happen? And then when the deadline comes and goes, we feel like we’ve somehow failed. But you haven’t failed, you just didn’t give yourself enough time. Sometimes just telling yourself, “this doesn’t need to happen right now” is enough to take the pressure off.

• Move on: I have a rule for myself that I’m not allowed to wallow for more than one day. When something goes wrong, it’s natural to be upset. Sometimes I cry or get angry, or just mope around the house feeling sorry for myself with a big glass of wine. And then I go to bed.

  But the next day, it’s over. It’s a new day. A fresh start. A chance to begin again. Whatever happened yesterday is in the past.

And honestly, I think it’s this last one that has made the biggest difference in my life. It’s what has helped me persist as a business owner, and helps me keep loving my teenagers even when they’re, well, teenagers.

Because every day is a new day.

LM Montgomary once wrote, “isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?” Along those same lines, Mel Gibson once said “it’s a wise man who understand that every day is a new beginning, because boy, how many mistakes do you make in a day?” 

In other words? Tomorrow is waiting for you to try again.

And I guess that’s my challenge for you this week—to wake up each morning, determined to give yourself a fresh start. Whatever’s gone wrong might still be wrong, but it doesn’t have to be the end.

Live with purpose, friend, and have a wonderful week!

xoxo, Ruth

P.S. I always LOVE hearing from you—feel free to hit reply to this email to let me know how I can encourage you this week!

This week’s podcast episode…

What’s cooking in my kitchen…

Here are the recipes I shared this past week:

The latest from my Instagram…

One of my goals this year is to be more consistent on social media, so I’ve committed to sharing at least one post a day on Instagram. If you’re there, I’d love to connect with you—find me at @RuthSoukup

What’s Happening Around RSO…