One bad choice isn’t going to derail your pursuits, so why are you letting it?
One bad day isn’t going to derail everything you’ve worked for, just like one bad choice isn’t going to disrupt everything you wanted to achieve.
Say you picked pizza over a grilled chicken salad for lunch. Guess what? You’ve not “fallen off the wagon.” Your diet isn’t ruined. Your nutrition plan isn’t a failure. It’s just one meal.
If you hit the snooze button this morning instead of hitting the gym, don’t beat yourself up all day long about it. It’s just one morning. Your fitness goals aren’t ruined. You aren’t going to “get fat” overnight because you missed a workout. It’s just one morning.
The problem is that we (you AND I) have this really bad habit of allowing one day to turn into two. That second turns into a third, a fourth… and then we realize that our one mistake has snowballed into more. We allowed ourselves to use that first mistake as the excuse to make a second one.
That one single choice becomes the catalyst for us to keep making them, creating a long losing streak.
But what if we looked at each choice independently of the others? What if our focus became on just the next choice we have to make?
This is the one choice I have. What can I choose in order to win it?
You’re not worried about what decision was made last time. You’re not fretting about a future unknown that may or may not happen. We are dialed into just the next choice and focused on how we can win it.
The next choice. The next meal. The next workout. The next sales pitch.
Get your eyes off of past ones. Don’t stress about future ones that haven’t happened yet. Focus on how you’re going to win this one.
A great athlete can’t make a play on the field if they’re too distracted by what happened last play or where the party is after the game. They must be dialed into just the play at hand.
If you’re too distracted by your last poor choice, you’ll fail to capitalize on this next one.
Just win the next choice.