The path to optimal wellbeing is never a straight line.
Nearly all fitness and diet fads paint a simplistic picture of the journey between your present-self and your future goals. They assume that every day is equal, that you won’t have good days and bad days, that your willpower levels are the same at all moments of your life.
Humans aren’t robots. Even if we know the perfect path and have the step-by-step guide to reach a goal, we are imperfect and vulnerable. We make mistakes. We fall short.
Here’s the truth: No one reaches a goal without adjusting their course.
Whether it’s a sailboat or a rocketship, navigators monitor, check, and re-check the progress of a vessel throughout a voyage. These are some of the smartest people in the world often backed by extensive resources and cutting edge technology.
The reality: There are always forces and factors at play that we can’t predict, so if we want to reach our destination safely and efficiently, we have to make small course-corrections throughout a journey to stay on track for the ultimate goal. If we are attentive and mindful, a small deviation never grows into a large deviation. We saw that we were straying from our path and nudged the boat back onto the correct trajectory.
Think of your health journey in the same way.
A bad choice or a bad day is not the end of your journey, but you also can’t go back and change the past. You can, however, acknowledge that you strayed from your path and make the adjustments you need to get back on track.
You can’t undo a crosswind, but if you take action, your progress toward your goal can continue on as if nothing happened.
Don’t be so hard on yourself.