We are back to the theme of the past few days. Yesterday I blogged about The Progress of Goals. Today I want to talk about what happens if you miss a goal, or get stuck.

You have your long range goals. You have broken them all down into managable smaller chunks. Maybe you have weekly or monthly goals. These are great. Until you miss one.

Now what? Your whole plan and goals has been thrown off. What now? More than likely if you miss one, the next one is set akilter and now you are really stuck.

Goals are great things. But when you don’t make them and lose sight of the end goal it can be very detrimental.

Missing smaller goals may mean you need to go in and adjust your end goal. It may not. Lets go back to my novel example.

I didn’t get written what I needed to this month. You know what that is like. You have a sick kid, the dog needed to go to the vet and the lady at the FRG needed 6 dozen cupcakes made by friday. It’s been one of those weeks.

I didn’t get the hour a day to write. I have nothing down on paper, or screen. This is really discouraging. I will not meet my goal of a chapter this week. I won’t have my draft done by the deadline. How can I find a publisher if I don’t have a polished copy by 18 months.

It’s official I am discouraged. I am stuck. I don’t want to sit down and write because I can no longer see that end goal in site. What used to be a clear picture of my final outcome has become cloudy and a bit muddied.

Well get out the windex and clean it off. You may not be able to make up a whole weeks worth in a short sitting, but you can still acheive that goal. Don’t get discouraged.

I didn’t write for five hours this week as was my goal. That is a big chunk of time. Ten hours in one week may be a bit much for me. But maybe adding just fifteen minutes a day is doable for me. That would take 20 days for me to get caught up. Yes I know that is 4 weeks. But then I am back on course.

What I am saying is you can go in and adjust your short term goals. Make them work for you. If for some reason one doesn’t work for you, adjust it, change it or delete it and move on.

Goals are there to help you. Don’t let them become stumbling blocks. Change is a good thing some times.

Remember they are your goals. Keep the long term goals in your site. The short term goals are stepping stones to get there. If you have to take another path that is ok. Give yourself permission to do that.