Can you smell the optimism in the air? Football season is upon us and for many, the year for dominance is here and now. The team is healthy. Key additions were made in the offseason. Preseason has shown nothing but growth from last season.
Yet as we’ve seen time and time again, the reality of the unknown and unpredictable hits us square in the head. Reality at time takes the game plan to success, rips it up, stomps on it, and throws it to the waste side. All it takes is one injury, one scandal, one regression of skillset to a key player to convert championship seasons into “guess there’s always next season” mentality.
Tom Brady’s knee injury in 2009 opening game resulted in the Patriots missing the playoffs. Peyton Manning’s neck issues sent the Colts in a freefall from frontrunners to bottom feeders in 2011.
Reality disrupts expectations. In sports, in life, in our everyday endeavors. A lot of it tends to be uncontrollable but how we respond and take on the challenge can be controllable. We can let the reality that hits us in our face knock us down and keep us down. Or we can choose to focus on getting back up and seeing what other opportunities exist.
If you’re focused on improving your health and wellness and sprain an ankle, is your health and wellness journey done? Or can you shift focus from the limitations the sprained ankle gives to another part of the body you’re still able to work hard and develop. Maybe more emphasis goes to what you’re eating because you know you won’t be working out the same way as before. There’s the path of letting this hurdle derail us and there’s a path where we adapt and find other ways to accel in our journey.
You get the dreaded call from school your kid is sick, another derailer of your gameplan.
A leak in a pipe in the house causes a mess or the washing machine goes out – both derailers of the gameplan.
The game plan we draw up for the day, the week, the year, it will almost certainly get derailed. These disruptors make it easier to let the gameplan slip little by little as more challenges present themselves. But the game plan for who you’re striving to become is not meant to be static. It’s meant to be dynamic in nature, ready for when challenges present themselves, ready for the eraser to be used to pivot to keep moving forward. Moving forward to your authentic better tomorrow.
Instead of disruptions being a surprise, mentally expect challenges to present themselves. While we may not know what disruptions are up ahead, we can mentally expect hurdles to present themselves which allows our mind to be ready to pivot. When these hurdles trip us up, we find not only a way to get back up, but also get back on our path for what we’re striving to become.
Take your step: as you think about what you’re looking to accomplish this week and map out what success may look like for you the next few days, build in the question of how will I pivot when a disruption presents itself? Take time thinking through ways within the next week you may be able to pivot. Where may you need to pivot to get all your workouts in? What time may you be able to carve out to catch up on work? What might you have to flex to be able to make all the kids’ activities? Go into the week expecting disruption and let your mind be okay that pivoting is the norm for success.