Plan Your Comeback

Your 2017 intentions have officially gone bust. You’re not going to hit your goals by the end of the year.

That’s ok.

Here’s a radical idea: Your detour might be getting you to your destination after all.

This is what happened for Robin, who spent years as a middle-school orchestra director. Her type A personality was the perfect match for the precision demanded by classical music. She pushed herself to climb the ladder at her school district, ultimately earning her master’s degree online. She finally got promoted and her paycheck increased…by $50.

That moment was her emotional bottom. She faced facts and realized becoming a school principal was out of reach. Her best bet was to sacrifice the career she loved for financial stability. She said, “I remember crying when I was writing my résumé, knowing I was resigning my passion in order to make more money, and knowing I had to. I wanted my daughter to go to college, to be comfortable.”

But a funny thing happened. All the left brain, logical skills she used for conducting, such as organization and communication, proved to be a perfect set-up for her new job in IT. In short order, she was leading a team. Robin had less stress and her self-esteem soared with annual raises and bonuses. She even lost several hundred pounds – 100 of her own and more when she had the confidence to leave her marriage. These days her emotional life is as healthy as her bank account.

In the October series, In the Solution Now, we’ve met people who learned how to connect logic with their instincts:

• In “Handled”, superstar chef Anthony Bourdain admitted he used to be a pro at drowning out his instincts. He got into the solution once he conquered his fears and faced down the mountain of debt he had created.
• In “One and the Same,” we saw how your life purpose doesn’t need to wait until “later”. You’re in the solution when you start integrating big dreams into today’s life.
• In “Who’s Got the Good?”, Nandita learned that her instincts were pushing her to follow her passion. She didn’t need to rely on someone else for happiness. She had the ability to create good right where she was.
• In “Stress Testing Your Marriage,” Sean and Katrina ignored their instincts and jobbed out their problems. Their constant workarounds addressed the situation, but a real solution appeared once they started to connect on a regular basis

Combining head and heart isn’t about swinging to one extreme or another. It’s about staying conscious to small guideposts and then acting. Like Robin, you may feel like you’ve been side-tracked. You may feel like life is pre-determined, that you don’t have any choices. This is the week for resilience. It’s time to dust yourself off and plan your comeback, even if it doesn’t happen in the next eight weeks. Cry. Kick and scream. But get moving.

When you change from traditional, binary thinking to blended thinking combining your intuition with your rational mind, you’re more than in the solution. You’re a great boss of you.