If you haven’t met me yet, I’m Darryl Hicks, CEO of Tungsten Revenue Consultants. Recently, I wrote a goal-setting article about how stating your intention of where, when, and how you would complete your goal would make you more successful than if you were using motivation boosters alone. You can check out that article here.

I received a lot of good feedback about the article, but one comment posed an interesting question. To paraphrase, they asked about the unpredictable parts of life. What if you plan to complete a goal, but an emergency happens? I did post a response to it as a comment to the article, but I want to expand upon it a little more.

First off, they are right. As famously put by Robert Burns, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. If one of these emergencies interrupts a goal you wrote with intention, there is a backup plan. You use “If… then” or “because… then” statements.

If You Build It, They Will Come.

If you build your plan around potential emergencies, you won’t have to sacrifice  your goals to them. If you build your plan properly, then results will come to you.

Let’s say you write down an intention to do 20 minutes of strong exercise at 2pm, in your living room. You should also write something like “If I cannot exercise at that time, then do it at 4pm instead.” Don’t just say later, set yourself an actual time. Or, “If something happens and I can no longer exercise at all, then I will substitute tonight’s snack with a piece of fruit.”

Because we can never predict the future, there are “because…then” statements too, for fixing your plan after the emergency happens. “Because I overslept and didn’t have time to meditate, I will meditate during my lunch hour instead.”

The Flip-Side

Don’t get so caught up in success that you over plan your whole life. Part of the happiness from life comes from its unpredictability. Not all these emergencies are bad things; sometimes, they are opportunities. Like I said in my original reply, sometimes you can be successful just by being a good parent to your children. If you have to sacrifice your goal to pick them up from school or take care of them, you’re not any less successful for it.

That said, take this advice to heart. Set two or three goals at the beginning of every day, write them down with intent, then state your backup plan. For everything else that comes your way, make the best of it.

For more helpful words of advice, visit our other social media pages, or check out Darryl Hicks Tungsten.

source: https://darrylhickstungstenblog.wordpress.com/