Overcoming Obstacles – When Life Happens

We’ve all had those days.  The days where nothing seems to go as planned, everything seems to take 10 times longer than normal to accomplish, and everything that could go wrong, does go wrong.  Whether it’s sick kids, the dog getting into the garbage and tearing it all over the house, forgetting to put the coffee pot under the brewing coffee maker at the same time that the milk you’re heating for yogurt is boiling all over the stove top, the kids deciding that it would be way more fun to dump out their breakfast bowls and proceed to fling the contents across the dining room and themselves.  Not that I have experience with any of this, I’ve just heard about it from others, ahem.

One of my dad’s many famous sayings to us when we were growing up was, Life is what happens when you have other plans.

Sometimes life just gets in the way, huh?

So, we’ve taken the first step in overcoming an obstacle to going green in our life, and then life happens, and we get off track, distracted, or worse yet, even take a step backwards. And we may feel a little bit defeated. Or overwhelmed… again. We might feel like the change we are trying to make is just never actually going to happen. How do we get back on track toward making changes after life messes with our best efforts?

Refocus

Remind yourself why you were making the change to begin with. Why is the change important to you? For me, I was writing an upcoming post on conserving water and it took me back to the reason why I am working to conserve water at our house and got me motivated to get back on track.

Re-Start

Did you have some success when you took your first step? Go back and take that first step again if you have to, or begin right where you left off. Don’t kick yourself that you got off track for a while, just jump back on and get back on the right track as soon as you can. In looking back at my first step, I said that we would work on getting a low-flow shower head, and I had forgotten about that in the midst of life happening.  I’m committing again to work on that this weekend!

Renew

You know I had to sneak that one in there didn’t you. 🙂 Anyway, renew your commitment to making the change and getting back on track. Again, focus on moving forward toward change and not on the set back.  Through refocusing and re-starting, I feel motivated again, after dealing with the life stuff, to work on decreasing the amount of water we use and waste around our home.

Remember, it’s definitely okay to take baby steps towards change, we’re not trying to climb a mountain in a single bound. We are trying to overcome an obstacle in our lives to going green by taking small steps, making small changes, taking the first step, and continuing to take steps, even when life gets in the way.

How are you doing with overcoming your obstacle?  Do you find that when you try to work on and make changes that life just seems to get in your way, or am I the only one here?

Photo by Emli Bendixen