The rock is smiling at me...

Sometimes we have an excellent plan.  We have challenging, concrete, measurable goals.  We have terrific strategies.  We know what we want and how to get it!

And then we blow it.

It doesn’t matter if blowing it means eating the whole pizza or watching twelve continuous hours of Jerry Springer (is he even still on?) instead of exercising or both at the same time.  Blowing it means we get a brand-new mini-goal:  not letting one mistake totally derail us.

Cognitive behavioral therapy offers a blueprint for this mini-goal.  Here’s what we need to do to get back to what’s important to us:

Face it.  We did it.  Yep, that was us on the couch.  It happened.  But it is over now.

Think it over.  Consider what happened.  Maybe we had a Really Bad Day.  Do some analysis to sort out why we made such an unfortunate choice.

Think it over, again, but this time with what we should have done instead.  We could have transformed that Really Bad Day into a Really Kick-Butt Workout, maybe with punches or ball slams.

Track today.  Yes, we try to do this every day, but the day after a slip it is particularly important to write down what we are doing in the area we are targeting for change, whether that is what we eat or how we move or something else.

Get on with it.  It is not a good idea to do a punitive workout or an Eat-All-Kale day as penance.  We just need to work the plan we already have in place.  Start here, with this day, in this place, with this body.  Up from here.