Setting yourself Up for FAILURE

I decided that today I wanted to talk about failure. Why in the world would anyone ever want to actually talk about failure? It is something that happens to everyone but no one wants to admit it. I HAVE FAILED to follow through with my morning routine because I have set myself up for failure. How I did that was by thinking that I would have no issues getting up at 6am everyday and completing a few chores and a workout. I currently feel like I just set a new years resolution to lose 50 pounds in 2 months or to have a new job making 6 figures by the end of the week (without any skills). So now that I have admitted I am not following through with my plan, what do I do? I try again. I get back onto the horse scarred or not and I ride again. However, I first need to fix the reasons for my failure.

There is no failure except in no longer trying.  ~Elbert Hubbard

Have you ever noticed how resilient kids are? About a year ago my daughter was in a gymnastics class at The Little Gym. I loved taking her to class just to watch her. She would get up on the big balance beam and practically run all the way to the end and then leap off. If she fell, she would look around, get up and go back to the start of the beam. As a parent I was so proud of her for trying again. As an adult I wish I could be more like her. Most adults will admit their failures and then give up. However, in giving up, they make an even larger failure than the setback they faced to begin with. The innocence of a child is what allows them to unknowingly fail and keep going. They don’t understand the meaning behind failure or the consequences that might occur from giving up. However, the pain of life lessons and rejection cause most adults to quit before they can be hurt again. Thus creating that larger failure I mentioned before.

I have not failed.  I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.  ~Thomas Edison

Now I need to reexamine my goals and how I can achieve them without giving up. Why did I fail to begin with? This is the part in today’s blog where I will be giving all the woe is ME’s and excuses for why I haven’t been following though. If you don't want to read my whining then skip to the next section or forever hold your peace.

My plan currently looks like this:

1. Wake up (6am)/make coffee/watch some news

2. Put a load of laundry in the Washer/Exercise

3. Shower/Dress/Make bed
4. Wake up my girls and make Breakfast
5. Clean up Breakfast dishes

My first excuse is that 6am is very, very early when you have a teething baby who goes to bed at 2am. With this being the first step I feel like my whole routine is thrown off when I hit the snooze button. Instead of just doing the routine when I do finally get up, I don’t do anything at all. This next part isn’t so much an excuse as it is a solution. I believe I may have given myself too much to do right off the start. The tip I was given was to have 5 things that you can do every morning. I have 10. Now that I have an idea what may have caused my failure, I can now decide what to do about fixing it.

I CAN DO THIS!



If you're doing your best, you won't have any time to worry about failure.  ~Quoted in P.S. I Love You, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

This will be my new plan......

1. Wake up (7am)

2. Put a load of laundry in the Washer

3. Exercise

4. Shower/Dress

5. Wake up my girls and make Breakfast

As I get better at sticking with my routine and as things come up I can and probably will add things to my plan. I think if I take baby steps and stick with this small routine, things will begin to fall into place for me and my family.

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.  ~Bill Cosby