There is a phrase that goes, ” Man plans, but God laughs. Many times, we as men will have these grandiose ideas; however, something comes along the way and will simply derail them. And what’s worse, sometimes these derailments don’t happen until years down the road. They often blindside us, and then a few months later, we are trying to figure out what happened.
This happened to me last year. I was pushing for this site and the business of the Relaxed Male to become a successful business, or successful in my definition. Then around June or July, the posts started to wane, and then in October, poof, my last post, and I haven’t posted till THis post.
Why? What went wrong, and how can this loss of momentum be helpful for you?
There are many reasons, and I have struggled to write many times. I would try to start going in fits and spurts, and then nothing. I would have pretty good ideas, but nothing that would surface.
I have noticed while writing that my typing has fallen off a cliff. Yet that isn’t the cause of my lack of posts or podcast episodes.
I will talk about the details as I get back into the habit of writing to you again. Today, I wanted to share what you can do to help get yourself back on the path you are working on.
So why did the wheels fall off?
The reason that we lose focus, lose concentration, slow down, lose our momentum, however you wanna phrase it, is entirely dependent upon you. For me, there were several life events that were happening, and they took more of my focus. But also, I realized I was putting a whole lot of pressure upon myself to get this business up and moving. I was focused on this business as a money endeavor and not as a tool of passion.
Somewhere along the way, I took my lack of happiness and satisfaction and blamed it on a circumstance. That circumstance being that I was not bringing in enough money. If you have listened to the podcast or read any of my posts before this, you have a good idea as to where my downfall was. That problem is the fact that I was making the circumstance something negative. I was neck deep in a scarcity mindset. Scarcity mindset is a huge drawback.
But the problem is, what does a completely neutral circumstance mean to you? When you understand that circumstances are neutral, the doors open up wider for your possibilities. You can stop fighting with your wife because you’re not making her be the source of your suffering, and that’s what it was for me. Instead of having my focus on helping men have better relationships and live a more stress-free life, I was, in fact, doing quite the opposite.
Therefore, when my wife actually suggested that I change jobs so that we can start bringing some money in and possibly get some healthcare, and I finally relented, knowing that I was probably going to have to put this site on the back burner. There was a huge weight lifted off of me. So, without even realizing that I was facing burnout. And that’s one of the reasons why it’s taking me so long to actually get another blog post written.
So thanks to this event and other events that have piled into my life. I have a good idea as to where things went wrong, how we need to get back on track, and how long this applies to you, and having the greatest relationship with your wife, you can have.
We lose sight of the goal.
The biggest issue I came across as I was reflecting on the past year was what went wrong, and besides the immense amount of resistance I was facing, I lost sight of my goal. As mentioned earlier, I started to make it about a return on investment, not helping the men in my community.
I did not pay attention to my thoughts. I lost sight of what was important in pursuit of a larger goal that I still want. I just haven’t figured out how I can get it. And that caused a lot of stress, and that was a big distraction too.
So, for you, what is the goal that you wanted? Is that still your goal, or did you suddenly change your focus to something different? This is something you have to be honest with yourself about because it can be easy to lie to yourself.
We get distracted
As I’m well aware that you know, life comes at us fast. And many times, we will become obsessed with a fleeting event. There are other times that an event will just be set and square in the middle of your face, and you can’t get around it. I also had this happen last year. I had a family member who found themselves in an abusive relationship. And it was so chaotic that it was in their house that it bled over into the rest of the family’s houses.
I often found myself thinking of how I could rectify this issue and of illegal ways. And in a very indirect way, this abuser wormed himself into the middle of my thoughts so that they were the only ones I could think of as I was driving. So I had very unintentional thoughts that were not directed at what I needed to do.
Life does this to all of us. You want to be a leader in your home, yet, unintentionally, your old victim mindset comes pouring back in. We get distracted by problems and lose our power instead of being able to stand with authority.
Don’t beat yourself up because you got distracted. Everybody gets distracted. On so many different levels, often because we. Had something happen in our lives that we did not anticipate. Those things that blindside you on an idle Tuesday are often the most impactful. Therefore, the best thing to do is just accept that you got distracted and start making a plan on how to get back on track.
We become disillusioned
Another problem that we run into is that we often become disillusioned with our goal. This is why we need to have our “why”. We need to have a reason as to why we keep going on. What is our purpose for our pursuit? Because you want your wife to love you even more? To have a connection with your spouse that is meaningful?
Because you want to provide a better life for your family, it could be another reason for doing whatever it is you do. Yet often we push and push, and we don’t feel like we’re making enough headway, and we start to lose our spirit.
This could be a good thing or a bad thing. All of these “reasons” are our thoughts that we have about a circumstance. Which means you can accept that thought, or you can change it. May not be easy, but then again, it may just be the wake-up call that causes you to change your thoughts.
So no matter if we get lost in our plans, distracted by life, or completely just crash out because we’re not getting where we want to be, you’re always pitted with the fact that it is all in your power. which is the biggest Hope inducer you could come across.
What are you making your derailment mean about you?
To get yourself back on track, we have to pay attention to what our thoughts are. Because our thoughts create our results, if you’re going the wrong direction, then it is imperative that you change your thoughts, or you will just find yourself back in the same place again.
One of the biggest questions you want to ask yourself is what are you making the circumstance mean about you?
For example, I was making my wife want me to table the coaching business to mean that she doesn’t believe in it. If she doesn’t believe in it, then that means that she didn’t support me at all, and that hurt emotionally speaking. No, does that mean that she doesn’t believe in me? No, and I knew she didn’t believe in coaching the same way, and the same amount that I believed in it, based upon the circumstances that she presented me, which wasn’t talking about coaching in general. I was making her actions mean that I was just wasting time and money, and then I would never succeed. Those thoughts that I was having were what were holding me back from just altering my publishing schedule.
Those thoughts put me into ruminating way too long and way too much about how many people thought I was a fool for just wanting to be a coach. And the truth of the matter is, I am a coach. Am I Tony Robbins level coaching? Oh hell no, I am Bryan Goodwin level of coaching, and it takes some work, sometimes, to be OK with that. I would love to be at Mel Robbins‘ level of coaching, even Brooke Castillo’s level of coaching, before she took a break. However, I am not because I am not any of those people. I am me, warts and all, and this is what I will perpetually be working on. Because when I become the most accepting person of myself, I get to accept everybody else too.
Some pay attention to what you made your derailment in your goals mean about you because they’re not what everybody else thinks. It is only what you think of yourself. Why do you think everybody’s gonna think you’re a laughing stock because deep down, secretly, you think you’re a laughing stock? You can change that.
How do you get back on track?
So how do you get back on track after you started to accept yourself for being yourself and that you’re sometimes going to get distracted, and you’re OK with being distracted, you’re OK with getting off track, because it doesn’t mean anything. It’s a circumstance; it is neutral. It is not good nor is it bad. How do you get back on track? First, utilize your superpowered mindset. Make sure you’re not running in scarce of the mindset. Work to have an abundant mindset.
Your mindset is a lot like the tracks that your thoughts are going to run on. Some people even look at mindset as being their philosophical compass. We can have the good days and the bad days, and we can even be grateful for the bad days because that means our good days are gonna be even better. So look at what your mindset is about going forward towards your goal, and be intentional with those thoughts.
It is tough to get your momentum back. For me, I was cranking out two blog posts a week, one blog post being more than 15 to 3000 words, and a 30-minute to an hour-long podcast. And now I am cranking out a block post about once a year. I have to start again in first gear before I can go into second gear until I finally hit overdrive. Am I going to be posting every single week? No, I work one week of nights, then I do one week of days, and then I have six days off, and my focus was so intent on just getting those two blog posts going that I neglected my house, so I can’t spend six days working on the blog post and six days working on the podcast. I might be able to make it one day, but I have to have several days to get my house back into shape. I let it suffer something miserable because I was overly focused on trying to make money, not help you.
So you have to be intentional in your decisions. I had stopped being intentional in my actions. I would take every Saturday and spend six hours working on blog posts and podcast episodes. After that, I had Sunday to get ready to go to work again, but it was not working. And I am now having to hustle three times as hard to get everything back into shape as it needs to be as a responsible homeowner. I mean, I let my house outside of my house get so bad that my insurance company thought it was not my primary residence.
So for you, make sure you’re being intentional with your thoughts and your actions so that you get the results that you want.
Utilize your band of brothers also. Because when we fail, we make it mean something horrible about us, and it doesn’t mean anything, but that is one of the benefits of a band of Brothers at your disposal. When you’re able to go and talk to a group of guys that you see and talk to regularly, they can do some magic for your disposition. They’re able to take the negativity off your shoulders and place positive energy back upon you. Therefore, don’t grieve about your downfalls in silence. You got off track. OK, talk about it. Let you let the guys help you troubleshoot what you did wrong, take what they say. Apply what makes sense and carry on.
And finally, the greatest tool for getting back on track is to be grateful. Gratitude is a perpetual gift, and it provides abundance, energy, and positivity in everything that you do. And if you’re struggling with gratitude, I have seven tools to build more gratitude.
Be too hard upon yourself simply because life hits you with an anvil. Your car blew up, and for whatever reason, Grandma’s decided she needs to start stripping. We don’t get to control anything that happens around us.
The only two things we get to actually control are our thoughts about circumstances, interactions that we take to them, and many times, that is so tough for us to do many times, we wish we could have full control over everybody else’s lives so we could make sure their lives go right. However, it is no worse than sitting here struggling with our own lives, so breathe easy and know that, yeah, your ideas didn’t quite go according to plan, but are you willing to get back up and dust yourself off and try again? Because you’re probably not gonna get where you want to be on the 10th try, you’re probably not gonna get where you wanna be on the 20th try or even the 70th try or even the hundredth try, yet maybe just maybe that first try might be the very special combination that kicks things off and gets you to where you want to be.
The frustrations in the winds and the losses and the victories and the defeats all accumulate into us having an amazing, wonderful, beautiful life, and as long as we don’t forget about that, we’re gonna do pretty darn good, so go out there and win the day.
