Back on Track

by Sara Marchessault

You know those times when you get off track? When circumstances that are out of your control perk their ugly heads and divert you from your plans…does it piss you off?

I’ll be honest. It pisses me off.

I don’t always handle it really well.

First I get a wind, an element of gusto if you will. I take on extra duties with a smile. I restructure my day to make sure that everything else – everyone else – is taken care. How do you get back on track?

After a fashion, I notice that I am feeling more tired than usual. This is what I consider to be phase two. Falling into bed exhausted at the end of the day and my last thoughts are of the things I didn’t get done before I made it to bed.

A short time passes and I move into phase three. And that’s when I get annoyed. The frustration sets in and I start to get bitter and cranky. The dark side starts to take over.

The fun part is getting back on track.

How do we do it? How do we recover and get things moving again?

One of the hardest things is that our proverbial track actually becomes blurry, shrouded in fog. The clear direction we had before that circumstance reared its ugly head is lost.

When we do have time to sit down and focus on a work project it takes some time to figure out what we should be doing and how best to target our energy.

So, the first thing we can do to get back on track is ask myself one of my favorite questions: what is my very next step?

That question is absolutely magical. It clears the haze when your head is full of shoulds and too many ideas.

It helps us to focus when we’re feeling tired and exhausted after fulfilling our mommy responsibilities.

The best part about this question is that it inspires and motivates us. We might even be able to find a few minutes to tackle that very next step when we suddenly realize that it’s something simple and do-able.

That’s the next step to getting back on track. We break down our big ideas into simple steps and tackle one of those steps at a time. It might just be ten or fifteen minutes that you can grab in one day, and that’s okay.

Ten or fifteen minutes is always better than zero minutes. Always.

When making things simple still feels heavy and complicated, it’s time to pull out your journal. Take a few minutes to flush out the foggy, heavy thoughts and soon you’ll find yourself back on track.

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