How I Turned My Biggest Setback Into Success
0Top o' the Mornin' to Ya!
Do you have a miss plan? What's a miss plan, you might ask? A miss plan is what you do when you miss something you intended to do - and it might be the most important strategy you never knew you needed.
What?
This morning I woke up and realized I didn't send out my Daily BS email yesterday. My old, natural miss plan would have been: "Oh shoot, I missed that. I'm so horrible. I'm bad. Oh my gosh!" I'd launch into a guilt trip, feel ashamed, not want to continue, and just get all twisted up about it.
It's like that meditation thing where you think one wandering thought ruins the entire session and you drag on about it forever. But I've developed a much better approach over the years.
My story goes back about 10 years when we were taking Financial Peace University. I hadn't been tithing consistently, and my perfectionist mindset was telling me I needed to catch up on all the years I'd missed. Our instructor shared something Dave Ramsey teaches: "God gave you what He gave you and asks for 10%. You don't have to catch up. There's no catching up - it's like trying to earn your salvation."
Why?
That revelation helped me realize I'd been living with an unhealthy perfectionism - undiagnosed OCD tendencies where everything had to be "just right." Once I had that awakening, I created a better miss plan.
I didn't visualize missing intentionally, but I did visualize responding to a miss. I planned what to do when that miss happens: forgive myself, let it go, recognize there's nothing I can do about what's already past, and simply carry on to do the next right thing.
Lesson
If you have a proper miss plan in place, your miss can become an effective learning opportunity. We coach our kids, colleagues, and team members that "we win or we learn." Real failure isn't the miss itself - failure is not having a miss plan and taking that downward spiral from a simple mistake.
Having a miss strategy visualized ahead of time - knowing how to react when you don't meet your own expectations - that's what gives us victory, success, and the learning we need from any situation.
Part of today's learning was recognizing I didn't put "send Daily BS email" on my daily goals in my journal yesterday. I've been doing these emails for about 20 days now. They say habits form in 21 days, but that varies per person, per activity, and per your desire to do it. Clearly, it's not quite automatic yet - I still need it on my activity list.
Apply
Do you have a miss response visualization in your toolbox? When you miss something you intended to do, do you have a strategy that automatically kicks in? Or do you need to mentally pull it out and remind yourself: "Okay, I missed. I'm okay. I'm not evil, I'm not horrible, I'm not worthless."
Here are the steps for a healthy miss plan: acknowledge what happened without shame, identify what you can learn from it, adjust your system if needed, and take the next right action. That's how you turn a miss into proper learning and reduce the likelihood of missing again.
What's your miss strategy? I'd love to hear how you handle those inevitable moments when you fall short of your own expectations.
You be blessed!
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#MissStrategy #PersonalGrowth #Perfectionism #ChristianLeadership #GrowthMindset