Overcoming Setbacks: 5 Simple Strategies for Getting Back on Your Routine

Stephen Box: [00:00:00] It doesn't matter who you are, what title you have, how much money you have in the bank account, or how well you plan. At some point, something is going to throw you off of your routine. It's going to get you off track. So the questions become, how are you going to respond to those situations? What are you going to do to get yourself back on track?

guys, that is what we're gonna be talking about today.

Intro/Outro: Are you ready to break free from your old habits and create a better life for yourself and those around you? If so, welcome to Unshakable Habits. The podcast dedicated to helping men be better husbands, fathers, and leaders by prioritizing their physical and mental wellbeing.

Each week we'll look at health from a 360 degree perspective with inspiring stories and practical strategies for building Unshakable [00:01:00] habits that'll transform your life. Join Stephen Box, a board certified health and wellness coach, and let's change the world together one habit at a time.

Stephen Box: Welcome, welcome to the Unshakable Habits Podcast. I am your host. Stephen Box, national Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach. And guys, before I jump into today's subject, a couple quick announcements for you. Number one, please remember that we just launched, recently, our new Facebook community. And just so you guys know, the Facebook community is really gonna be a place for other men to be able to come in iron sharpen iron. We're gonna probably do some book club type stuff, and it's just gonna be a way for us to connect with other men and help each other to grow. also next month I'm gonna be launching a [00:02:00] six week program that is around sleep and stress management.

Now the reason I'm focusing on those two things is very simple. This time of year, a lot of you guys probably have kids that are going back to school. Then, you've got holidays coming up pretty quickly. You're getting back into a routine. Things are changing for you. It can really throw off your sleep schedule.

It can also make managing your stress difficult, and what I found is that when people aren't getting enough sleep and they're not managing their stress, They're coming to me and they're saying, Hey, I'm snapping at my wife and kids for absolutely no reason. I'm struggling to lose weight even when I make diet and exercise changes.

I'm always tired. I don't have energy to dedicate to my family afterwards or to workout or, even to be focused and productive at work and when we can get your sleep and your stress right. All those things get taken care of, guys. so I'm gonna be doing a new program on [00:03:00] that. I'm gonna be running a beta group, so it's gonna be limited.

probably gonna allow about 10 guys into that. so if that's something you're interested in jumping on the wait list, just let me know. you can just shoot me an email at Stephen at Unshakable habits.com. So jumping into today's topic, we're gonna be talking about how do you deal with when you fall off track, right?

When you have a setback, when things don't necessarily go according to plan. And I'll be honest with you guys, this, this topic's a little timely for me this week. It's something that I'm personally dealing with because I'm on date 10 of dealing with Covid right now. And I don't know if you guys can hear it or not, but my voice is still a little bit raspy, still dealing with some chest congestion and, a little bit of shortness of breath.

So if I need to pause and call for, or get some water or anything, today, I appreciate you guys patience on that. But the last 10 days for me have been a great [00:04:00] reminder of the things that I teach and the things that I coach and applying them back to. Myself. So I wanted to kinda share that experience with you guys today.

And what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at actually five different things that you can do when you've found that you've fallen off track. so number one is, We're going to really change our mindset. Okay? And it's better if you can actually do this before, right? Because I'm gonna tell you guys yes.

Sometimes we, we get thrown off track because it's something we can't control, like getting covid. But sometimes, most of the time, if we're being honest, when we fall off track, It is a result of overwhelm. And the reason we get overwhelmed is because we haven't given ourselves the tool to deal with [00:05:00] everything that we're putting onto our plates, right?

So yes, there are some things like saying yes to too much stuff and things like that contribute to that, but I also believe. If we develop a growth mindset, if we're always looking for the opportunity things and we have an attitude of gratitude to go along with that, and we are giving ourself micro doses of stress along the way to help build that discipline, help build that consistency into our routines, we are teaching our bodies how to deal with the stress, right?

Overwhelm is not a matter of having too much on your plate. Overwhelm is a matter of having more on your plate than you can handle. So if you're like most guys, myself included, and you see yourself as a problem solver, you're a fixer, right? it can be easy to wanna put things on your plate because you want to help other people.

You, value in that. And so [00:06:00] when you are doing that, what ends up happening is it's very easy to put too much on your plate. More than you can handle because you don't realize that it's more than you can handle until you've already done it. So by actually teaching ourselves how to deal with these things beforehand, it's gonna make dealing with it a lot easier.

But even if you're in the middle of it, even if you're dealing with it right now, you've maybe had some projects come back to work, or as I mentioned, kids are going back to school. Your routine is changing. You're trying to get back on track with everything. Whichever case you find yourself in right now, you can still start by turning on that growth mindset, right?

You can still start to look for the opportunities that exist within your circumstances, right? The next thing that we have to though is we [00:07:00] have to figure out what small actions can we take to move forward. Because if we just sit and we just freeze, which look, a lot of people do that judgment free, right?

But a lot of people will do this when overwhelm kicks in. We just freeze or we just start letting things go. And unfortunately guys, a lot of people, the first thing that goes is exercise and good nutrition, right? Because it becomes easier to just stop off at your favorite restaurant or fast food joint and get something to eat.

It becomes easier to sit down on the couch and justify it by saying that you're tired, right? Because at the end of the day, if you do not have a plan in place on how to move forward, you're not gonna move forward. You're gonna stay where you are. And the easiest thing we can do is start looking those small steps.

So some people will call this like a five minute action. [00:08:00] Just something that you could literally do within a couple of minutes, but I wanna take it a step further for you guys today, excuse me, because I want to look at this circumstance, and I wanna use this analogy of a dial. So imagine you have a dial that goes from zero up to 10, right?

So imagine like the radio dial or whatever. instead of volume, we're looking at activity levels. So zero is literally the dial is off, nothing is happening. And the thing is, that's where we don't wanna go. We never want the dial to be at zero. There are going to be some days where everything is perfect and you can have the dial crank all the way to 10.

You can be given your max effort. Then there's gonna be other days where it's gonna be at a one. You're gonna be doing the bare minimum. And that might feel unproductive and it might not feel like a [00:09:00] big thing. But the reality is what you are doing is going back to that growth mindset. You are priming your brain to understand that you never completely stop that.

You may slow down, you may dial back. You're never going to completely stop. And that's what having a growth mindset is about. And that's why these first two tie in so well together. Taking that five minute action or figuring out what are the different levels on that dial, what do different effort levels of effort look like for you is gonna be a huge thing.

Alright, the next step, step three is change your environment. Okay. Guys, a lot of times we get comfortable in our environments and things maybe start getting cluttered around you, right? That can have a negative impact on our emotions. Maybe the people that are around [00:10:00] us are distraction, right? Or maybe some of the stuff that you have around you is a distraction.

for example, in my office here, I don't have a TV because I don't even want the TV to be able to be on, I don't want it to be background noise or anything else. So I don't have a TV in here. It takes away the distraction from me. So look at your environment and ask yourself, is your environment helping you or hurting you in terms of getting back on track.

And sometimes it's not even a matter of anything being wrong with the environment. Sometimes just getting to a new place just. Going somewhere different for the day allows you to get outta your normal routine and get your brain to start thinking differently, to start changing your perspective on things.

you can use this not just when you're off track, but if you ever have some big important thing going on and it seems like you're stuck, leave your normal environment and go somewhere else and kinda sit in silence with [00:11:00] that and you will be shocked. How often your brain starts to think differently and starts to look for new solutions when you are no longer confined by your normal routines.

All right. Next thing is get support right now. This can be from a coach like myself. this can be by joining a community like the, Facebook community I told you about at the beginning of the episode. It can be a group of guys or a single friend that you have. This can be your spouse or your significant other.

It doesn't really matter just to get support from somewhere, because I think a lot of times, guys, we tend, especially us as men, we tend to want to think we gotta do it our own, that we have to figure it out and we can't ask anybody for help. But the reality is you ask any man who's ever found themself in a tough situation, [00:12:00] They actually asked for help.

Did they find it easier working with other people to get help, or did they find it easier working on their own? And unless you chose somebody who really wasn't very helpful at all because that person didn't know what they were doing and they weren't very supportive, then you're gonna say that you found it more beneficial to have help.

Okay. So choose wisely, but definitely choose to get a support system from someone else. and I'll just add to this is like a little bit of a bonus before I give you the, the last step here, but not just having support, but guys have some compassion with yourself, right? Like right now, there's been days where I just haven't had energy.

There's been days where I just had like a brain fog and. I just couldn't really think straight. And even though I had work to get done, even though there was things I wanted to do, I had to turn the dial back to one. [00:13:00] And I had to have compassion with myself that I couldn't be everything I wanted to be that day.

And I had to be okay with that. And I had to be forgiving to myself and not beat myself up over it, And in my case, maybe that seems a little easier to you because getting covid is something that's outside of my control, but, Even when you are the one who's responsible for whatever you're going through, even when what you did, your actions directly put you into this circumstance, it might be easier to beat yourself up.

But the reality is you still need to have some compassion with yourself. You need to understand. And that brings us to the last thing, which is learn from it. That's the beautiful thing. Like right now. If I had not gone through all this stuff before, if I didn't know all this stuff and I was dealing with what I'm dealing with Covid, what I would be looking at is, even though that's outside of my control and it's not my fault, I would be [00:14:00] looking at this from the standpoint of, okay, what areas did I fall behind on?

What things just completely fell apart without me present all, could I have made better systems for those things? I. Could I maybe bring someone else into my business to help out with those things, to future-proof and make sure that doesn't happen again? Maybe it's just a one-off thing and I don't need to really worry about it, right?

But no matter what, there are lessons that I can take from this and learn from this situation. And if it's something you did to yourself, if you put yourself in this position, even better, right? Because now. You can take that accountability. You can take that responsibility and say, you know what? I did this, but here's why.

Here's what happened. Here were the behaviors that I was utilizing that were solving a problem for me. I. But I now can see that maybe they weren't solving the problem as efficiently as possible, and maybe I need to look for some different alternatives. [00:15:00] And it goes back to the supporter thing. Maybe you're too close to it to see the alternative.

Maybe having that supporter system, having a coach, having a friend that you can rely on who's going to give it to you straight. Those things can actually help you out a lot. if you guys go back and listen to, my episode from last week. There was a really great line in there about, every single person needs to have their own board of directors, A group of five to seven people that you know are going to be honest with you and be real with you, and they're going to be able to tell you the things that you can't tell yourself.

And most of the time they're probably gonna have skills that you don't have so they can give you insights that you otherwise would never be able to get. Also, take that same concept and apply that. So that is, Hey guys, that is the five steps for getting yourself back on track. And again, the biggest thing I wanna stress [00:16:00] out of this is sometimes it takes a little bit of time.

I know a lot of times as guys, we want the solution, we want it fixed right now. And having some patience around that can be extremely tough. and depending on the circumstance, it may not take you very long, but it might be something that you have to really go back and fix. You might have to go back and undo a lot of thinking and a lot of thought processes that led you down the wrong path.

Or in my case, something that is outside of control that you just can't really do much about. So that's really for me, the biggest thing guys is. Has the compassion with yourself. Understand that things are gonna take the time they're gonna take. You gotta trust the process. But if you go through these steps, make sure that you got that growth mindset.

Figure out your activity levels like on that dial. What does a one look like? What's a 10 look like? What's a five look like? Then figure out where can you be on that dial every day? And just know that [00:17:00] zero is never an option, right? We always gotta take some small actions to move ourself forward, away from the setback and toward our future, right?

change your environment. If you're finding yourself stuck and you just can't get out, no matter what actions you try to take, try changing your environment and you might be surprised at the impact that can have. Then again, get support and then learn from it, right? See what lessons are available to you.

So hopefully you guys got some great value outta that. I appreciate, the patience dealing with my, my voice today. Maybe it doesn't sound as bad as I think it does, but if it does, I appreciate you guys patience and as always, wanna remind you guys that while none of us are born Unshakable, we can all become.

Unshakable.

Intro/Outro: Thank you for listening to the Unshakable Habits podcast with Coach Stephen [00:18:00] Box. Be sure to hit the subscribe button and help us spread the word by sharing the podcast with other men. If you are ready to create Unshakable habits, you can learn more and connect with us at unshakablehabits.com.