Alright kids, here comes a little slice of humble pie… I posted on my Instagram last month (p.s. do you follow me on Instragram? Healthy As Heck Instagram) that I was doing the “Gallon a day” water challenge.  I lasted a total of 14 days.  Yup, Health Coaches fail too! I was standing in my kitchen on that 14th day, still working on my long gone cold cup of coffee and realized it was about 3 pm and I had yet to drink any water… oops.  That meant there was no way I was getting in my gallon that day.  The next day seemed to go about the same way and after about 72 hours of this, I realized I was going to have to wave the white flag on this one.

So first let me say, that I do want to talk about water and all its benefits.  So stay tuned for another post all about that under the Body section.  But today I really wanted to talk about what happens when you fall off the wagon.  How do you get back on?

It is SO COMMON for people to set a health related goal, only to find themselves falling short.  I could have just let my failure go and nobody would have known any different.  That’s the beauty of social media, right?   No one would have known that I didn’t make it, except me.  But I want you all to trust that I will honestly tell you when I succeed and when I fail miserably.  And, regardless of which happens, my learning opportunity will always be yours too.  For the record, when I waved the white flag, I had every intention of beginning the water challenge again in March, because I knew I had made some errors that I wanted to try to fix the next time around.  So it’s March, and I am on my way again, but I want to share with you how I think about a #fail, that helps me regroup and start again.

I hear it all the time.  “Well I already blew my goal/eating plan/exercise plan/new habit/fill in the blank, so I might as well just give up now.”  You’ve probably heard yourself or someone close to you say the same thing, too.

In psychology, we call this all or nothing thinking.  It’s when you view a situation in black and white terms.  The event either went perfectly or was a total bust.  You either completely succeeded or you totally failed.  You had a piece of chocolate at lunch, so now you’re new eating plan is blown.

The problem with this type of thinking is that it doesn’t account for the gray that is always a part of life.  Things are rarely ever absolutes.  If you are always viewing situations in absolute terms, you are guaranteed to be left feeling defeated 50% (or more) of the time.  And the reality is, you weren’t defeated.  Chances are, you only made a tiny step backward. But if you always see it as a total loss, you give up completely rather than learning from the mistake and using it to propel you forward.

There is a psychological theory that explains the stages people go through when they are trying to change a behavior or habit.  I won’t get too much into the nitty-gritty of it.  But the important part is that it’s almost never a direct line from start to finish.  People generally decide they are going to change something after a significant amount of time spent thinking about it.  Then they go two or three steps forward and one step back until they finally get to the stage where their only job is to maintain whatever gains they made.  Even once they get there, they may fall back again and have to work their way through the process another time.  THIS IS ALL COMPLETELY NORMAL.  If you take a step back, it is almost never a failure, it’s just a normal hiccup on the path of change.

It’s also a beautiful moment to take stock of what didn’t work so you don’t repeat that mistake again.  That makes the next step forward so. much. easier, because now you know what not to do.

For me? I’ve realized that my coffee addiction seriously impedes my water intake.  My 7 month old has a real problem letting me finish my coffee in one sitting… so rather than finishing my coffee and moving on to water, I nurse that cup of joe for half the day.  Before I realize it, I have consumed a grand total of ZERO ounces of water.  So this month, I am trying to get my first bottle of water in before I start my cup of coffee to see if that helps me stay closer to my target.  If I had just given up after my February fail, I would never have learned whether or not this small shift makes a difference.  That’s the beauty of a setback, it offers you another, often easier, route to achieve your goal.

This life gives us endless opportunities for growth and change.  It doesn’t matter what the story is.  Maybe you’re still depressed, maybe you made a bad financial decision, maybe you binged today when you promised yourself you wouldn’t, maybe you screamed at your child today when you said today you were going to be calm (who’s got an AMEN on that one?).  We all have our own challenges.  But if we don’t get to our goal right way, we can still be successful.  We just have to understand that creating new behaviors takes serious work and we will often stumble as we are making our way.  Use those stumbles as a tool to learn and the process becomes so much quicker!

Take home tip: did you find yourself thinking… I do that! when you read the black and white thinking above?  You are not alone.  So many people get into the mental habit of thinking that way.  The best way to work on it is to start to pay close attention to your thinking.  Grab a journal and make it a point to jot down your thoughts when something doesn’t go your way.  Then find some thoughts that resemble the ones I described above.  Work on creating a new thought that allows for gray.  Something like “One piece of chocolate doesn’t have to ruin my whole eating plan.  I can stick to my plan at the next meal.”  The more you work at it the easier it will become!

Anybody working on creating a new healthy habit with me?  How is it going? Have you found yourself thinking in all or nothing ways? How did you challenge yourself to think a new way?  Fill me in through the comments below!

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