Clearing the Clutter to get back on track

This week I re-dedicated myself to my fitness goals, which I had pretty much abondoned in April.   It begs the question. 

How do you restart your goals once you lose momentum?

This is a question I have thought a lot about over the years.  I am the kind of person who gets distracted by whatever happens to catch my eye.  I am great at thinking up ideas, and strategizing really good game plans.  But I’m also really good at getting distracted away from my plan by whatever else happens to wander in front of my imagination.  And I have a really active imagination…

So here is what I’ve discovered in my over forty years on this planet:

First, whenever I start falling off a commitment, it usually isn’t in just one area of my life.  It usually is symptomatic of all areas of my life.  And the root of the problem is inevitably the same thing – too many incomplete things in my life.   Whenever I have too many open items; missed deadlines, things I said I would do but haven’t, unresolved conflict, undelivered communications, and other “messes” in my life that need to be cleaned up – my life quits working well.  When my life quits working well, then I lose focus on the things that are really important.  The more I lose focus, the more the messes accumulate, which lead to less focus.  It becomes a downward spiral. 

To stop the spiral, I have one tried and true method.   Start with your physical universe.  Ultimately you need to clean up all the messes in your life – relationships, promises, etc.  But it is always easiest to get unstuck by focusing first on the physical ones.  If I’m stuck at work, then I stop and clean my office.  If I’m stuck at home, then I find something there to clean. Lisa, by the way, is always estatic when I re-engage in life because I clean up all the messes I have around the house which were driving her crazy. 

Last week I took Friday off of work.  My intention was to spend most of the time on my new business, which required creativity I just didn’t have right then.  So I cleaned my room.  When that was done, I looked at where else I had incompletions in my life.  In particular I had an outstanding promise on a project to someone that was weeks late.  The project is now done.  So are a lot of other little incompletions that have been piling up in life.

Now I’m back on track.  I still feel really busy, but I’m focused and keeping things on track.  One of the things I’m doing to keep from accumulating more incompletions is that I’m really guarding what I commit to right now.  Between Volleyball coach, two jobs, and oh yeah – getting in shape, I don’t have a lot of free time.  I have to be clear about what I want and don’t want.  I have to sometimes say “no”, which I hate doing.

And by the way – I’ve exercised the last four days in a row.  It sure is easier when you don’t have a bunch of incompletions hanging over your head.