Overcoming Setbacks: Strategies for Getting Back on Your Routine

Stephen Box: 00:00:00

It doesn't matter who you are, what title you have, how

Stephen Box: 00:00:05

much money you have in the bank account, or how well you plan.

Stephen Box: 00:00:09

At some point, something is going to throw you off of your routine.

Stephen Box: 00:00:15

It's going to get you off track.

Stephen Box: 00:00:17

So the questions become, how are you going to respond to those situations?

Stephen Box: 00:00:22

What are you going to do to get yourself back on track?

Stephen Box: 00:00:26

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

Intro/Outro: 00:00:30

Are you ready to break free from your old habits and create a better

Intro/Outro: 00:00:34

life for yourself and those around you?

Intro/Outro: 00:00:37

If so, welcome to Unshakable Habits.

Intro/Outro: 00:00:40

The podcast dedicated to helping men be better husbands, fathers,

Intro/Outro: 00:00:45

and leaders by prioritizing their physical and mental wellbeing.

Intro/Outro: 00:00:50

Each week we'll look at health from a 360 degree perspective with

Intro/Outro: 00:00:55

inspiring stories and practical strategies for building Unshakable

Intro/Outro: 00:00:59

habits that'll transform your life.

Intro/Outro: 00:01:02

Join Stephen Box, a board certified health and wellness coach, and let's change

Intro/Outro: 00:01:07

the world together one habit at a time.

Stephen Box: 00:01:18

Welcome, welcome to the Unshakable Habits Podcast.

Stephen Box: 00:01:22

I am your host.

Stephen Box: 00:01:23

Stephen Box, national Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach.

Stephen Box: 00:01:27

And guys, before I jump into today's subject, a couple

Stephen Box: 00:01:32

quick announcements for you.

Stephen Box: 00:01:33

Number one, please remember that we just launched, recently,

Stephen Box: 00:01:37

our new Facebook community.

Stephen Box: 00:01:40

And just so you guys know, the Facebook community is really gonna

Stephen Box: 00:01:43

be a place for other men to be able to come in iron sharpen iron.

Stephen Box: 00:01:48

We're gonna probably do some book club type stuff, and it's just gonna

Stephen Box: 00:01:51

be a way for us to connect with other men and help each other to grow.

Stephen Box: 00:01:57

also next month I'm gonna be launching a six week program that is

Stephen Box: 00:02:01

around sleep and stress management.

Stephen Box: 00:02:05

Now the reason I'm focusing on those two things is very simple.

Stephen Box: 00:02:08

This time of year, a lot of you guys probably have kids

Stephen Box: 00:02:11

that are going back to school.

Stephen Box: 00:02:13

Then, you've got holidays coming up pretty quickly.

Stephen Box: 00:02:16

You're getting back into a routine.

Stephen Box: 00:02:18

Things are changing for you.

Stephen Box: 00:02:19

It can really throw off your sleep schedule.

Stephen Box: 00:02:21

It can also make managing your stress difficult, and what I found is that

Stephen Box: 00:02:27

when people aren't getting enough sleep and they're not managing their

Stephen Box: 00:02:30

stress, They're coming to me and they're saying, Hey, I'm snapping at my wife

Stephen Box: 00:02:34

and kids for absolutely no reason.

Stephen Box: 00:02:37

I'm struggling to lose weight even when I make diet and exercise changes.

Stephen Box: 00:02:42

I'm always tired.

Stephen Box: 00:02:43

I don't have energy to dedicate to my family afterwards or to

Stephen Box: 00:02:47

workout or, even to be focused and productive at work and when we can

Stephen Box: 00:02:52

get your sleep and your stress right.

Stephen Box: 00:02:55

All those things get taken care of, guys.

Stephen Box: 00:02:57

so I'm gonna be doing a new program on that.

Stephen Box: 00:03:00

I'm gonna be running a beta group, so it's gonna be limited.

Stephen Box: 00:03:02

probably gonna allow about 10 guys into that.

Stephen Box: 00:03:05

so if that's something you're interested in jumping on the

Stephen Box: 00:03:07

wait list, just let me know.

Stephen Box: 00:03:09

you can just shoot me an email at Stephen at Unshakable habits.com.

Stephen Box: 00:03:14

So jumping into today's topic, we're gonna be talking about how do you deal

Stephen Box: 00:03:20

with when you fall off track, right?

Stephen Box: 00:03:21

When you have a setback, when things don't necessarily go according to plan.

Stephen Box: 00:03:26

And I'll be honest with you guys, this, this topic's a

Stephen Box: 00:03:29

little timely for me this week.

Stephen Box: 00:03:31

It's something that I'm personally dealing with because I'm on date

Stephen Box: 00:03:35

10 of dealing with Covid right now.

Stephen Box: 00:03:39

And I don't know if you guys can hear it or not, but my voice is still

Stephen Box: 00:03:42

a little bit raspy, still dealing with some chest congestion and, a

Stephen Box: 00:03:47

little bit of shortness of breath.

Stephen Box: 00:03:49

So if I need to pause and call for, or get some water or anything, today, I

Stephen Box: 00:03:53

appreciate you guys patience on that.

Stephen Box: 00:03:55

But the last 10 days for me have been a great reminder of the things

Stephen Box: 00:04:02

that I teach and the things that I coach and applying them back to.

Stephen Box: 00:04:06

Myself.

Stephen Box: 00:04:06

So I wanted to kinda share that experience with you guys today.

Stephen Box: 00:04:12

And what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at actually five different

Stephen Box: 00:04:15

things that you can do when you've found that you've fallen off track.

Stephen Box: 00:04:20

so number one is, We're going to really change our mindset.

Stephen Box: 00:04:25

Okay?

Stephen Box: 00:04:26

And it's better if you can actually do this before, right?

Stephen Box: 00:04:30

Because I'm gonna tell you guys yes.

Stephen Box: 00:04:32

Sometimes we, we get thrown off track because it's something we

Stephen Box: 00:04:36

can't control, like getting covid.

Stephen Box: 00:04:39

But sometimes, most of the time, if we're being honest, when we fall off

Stephen Box: 00:04:46

track, It is a result of overwhelm.

Stephen Box: 00:04:51

And the reason we get overwhelmed is because we haven't given ourselves

Stephen Box: 00:04:56

the tool to deal with everything that we're putting onto our plates, right?

Stephen Box: 00:05:02

So yes, there are some things like saying yes to too much stuff and things like that

Stephen Box: 00:05:06

contribute to that, but I also believe.

Stephen Box: 00:05:10

If we develop a growth mindset, if we're always looking for the opportunity things

Stephen Box: 00:05:16

and we have an attitude of gratitude to go along with that, and we are giving

Stephen Box: 00:05:23

ourself micro doses of stress along the way to help build that discipline,

Stephen Box: 00:05:28

help build that consistency into our routines, we are teaching our bodies

Stephen Box: 00:05:33

how to deal with the stress, right?

Stephen Box: 00:05:36

Overwhelm is not a matter of having too much on your plate.

Stephen Box: 00:05:39

Overwhelm is a matter of having more on your plate than you can handle.

Stephen Box: 00:05:44

So if you're like most guys, myself included, and you see yourself as a

Stephen Box: 00:05:50

problem solver, you're a fixer, right?

Stephen Box: 00:05:52

it can be easy to wanna put things on your plate because

Stephen Box: 00:05:55

you want to help other people.

Stephen Box: 00:05:57

You, value in that.

Stephen Box: 00:05:58

And so when you are doing that, what ends up happening is it's very

Stephen Box: 00:06:05

easy to put too much on your plate.

Stephen Box: 00:06:08

More than you can handle because you don't realize that it's more than you

Stephen Box: 00:06:11

can handle until you've already done it.

Stephen Box: 00:06:13

So by actually teaching ourselves how to deal with these things beforehand, it's

Stephen Box: 00:06:21

gonna make dealing with it a lot easier.

Stephen Box: 00:06:23

But even if you're in the middle of it, even if you're dealing with

Stephen Box: 00:06:26

it right now, you've maybe had some projects come back to work, or as I

Stephen Box: 00:06:31

mentioned, kids are going back to school.

Stephen Box: 00:06:33

Your routine is changing.

Stephen Box: 00:06:34

You're trying to get back on track with everything.

Stephen Box: 00:06:37

Whichever case you find yourself in right now, you can still start by

Stephen Box: 00:06:44

turning on that growth mindset, right?

Stephen Box: 00:06:46

You can still start to look for the opportunities that exist

Stephen Box: 00:06:51

within your circumstances, right?

Stephen Box: 00:06:56

The next thing that we have to though is we have to figure out what small

Stephen Box: 00:07:01

actions can we take to move forward.

Stephen Box: 00:07:03

Because if we just sit and we just freeze, which look, a lot of people

Stephen Box: 00:07:07

do that judgment free, right?

Stephen Box: 00:07:09

But a lot of people will do this when overwhelm kicks in.

Stephen Box: 00:07:12

We just freeze or we just start letting things go.

Stephen Box: 00:07:17

And unfortunately guys, a lot of people, the first thing that goes is

Stephen Box: 00:07:22

exercise and good nutrition, right?

Stephen Box: 00:07:24

Because it becomes easier to just stop off at your favorite restaurant or fast

Stephen Box: 00:07:28

food joint and get something to eat.

Stephen Box: 00:07:31

It becomes easier to sit down on the couch and justify it by

Stephen Box: 00:07:35

saying that you're tired, right?

Stephen Box: 00:07:38

Because at the end of the day, if you do not have a plan in place on how to move

Stephen Box: 00:07:48

forward, you're not gonna move forward.

Stephen Box: 00:07:50

You're gonna stay where you are.

Stephen Box: 00:07:51

And the easiest thing we can do is start looking those small steps.

Stephen Box: 00:07:56

So some people will call this like a five minute action.

Stephen Box: 00:08:00

Just something that you could literally do within a couple of minutes, but I

Stephen Box: 00:08:03

wanna take it a step further for you guys today, excuse me, because I want

Stephen Box: 00:08:09

to look at this circumstance, and I wanna use this analogy of a dial.

Stephen Box: 00:08:17

So imagine you have a dial that goes from zero up to 10, right?

Stephen Box: 00:08:22

So imagine like the radio dial or whatever.

Stephen Box: 00:08:25

instead of volume, we're looking at activity levels.

Stephen Box: 00:08:30

So zero is literally the dial is off, nothing is happening.

Stephen Box: 00:08:36

And the thing is, that's where we don't wanna go.

Stephen Box: 00:08:38

We never want the dial to be at zero.

Stephen Box: 00:08:41

There are going to be some days where everything is perfect and you can

Stephen Box: 00:08:46

have the dial crank all the way to 10.

Stephen Box: 00:08:48

You can be given your max effort.

Stephen Box: 00:08:51

Then there's gonna be other days where it's gonna be at a one.

Stephen Box: 00:08:54

You're gonna be doing the bare minimum.

Stephen Box: 00:08:56

And that might feel unproductive and it might not feel like a big thing.

Stephen Box: 00:09:01

But the reality is what you are doing is going back to that growth mindset.

Stephen Box: 00:09:05

You are priming your brain to understand that you never completely stop that.

Stephen Box: 00:09:11

You may slow down, you may dial back.

Stephen Box: 00:09:14

You're never going to completely stop.

Stephen Box: 00:09:18

And that's what having a growth mindset is about.

Stephen Box: 00:09:22

And that's why these first two tie in so well together.

Stephen Box: 00:09:24

Taking that five minute action or figuring out what are the different

Stephen Box: 00:09:29

levels on that dial, what do different effort levels of effort look like

Stephen Box: 00:09:34

for you is gonna be a huge thing.

Stephen Box: 00:09:37

Alright, the next step, step three is change your environment.

Stephen Box: 00:09:42

Okay.

Stephen Box: 00:09:43

Guys, a lot of times we get comfortable in our environments and things maybe

Stephen Box: 00:09:51

start getting cluttered around you, right?

Stephen Box: 00:09:54

That can have a negative impact on our emotions.

Stephen Box: 00:09:57

Maybe the people that are around us are distraction, right?

Stephen Box: 00:10:02

Or maybe some of the stuff that you have around you is a distraction.

Stephen Box: 00:10:06

for example, in my office here, I don't have a TV because I don't even want the

Stephen Box: 00:10:10

TV to be able to be on, I don't want it to be background noise or anything else.

Stephen Box: 00:10:14

So I don't have a TV in here.

Stephen Box: 00:10:16

It takes away the distraction from me.

Stephen Box: 00:10:18

So look at your environment and ask yourself, is your environment

Stephen Box: 00:10:24

helping you or hurting you in terms of getting back on track.

Stephen Box: 00:10:27

And sometimes it's not even a matter of anything being wrong with the environment.

Stephen Box: 00:10:32

Sometimes just getting to a new place just.

Stephen Box: 00:10:35

Going somewhere different for the day allows you to get outta your

Stephen Box: 00:10:39

normal routine and get your brain to start thinking differently, to start

Stephen Box: 00:10:44

changing your perspective on things.

Stephen Box: 00:10:46

you can use this not just when you're off track, but if you ever have some

Stephen Box: 00:10:50

big important thing going on and it seems like you're stuck, leave your

Stephen Box: 00:10:54

normal environment and go somewhere else and kinda sit in silence

Stephen Box: 00:10:59

with that and you will be shocked.

Stephen Box: 00:11:02

How often your brain starts to think differently and starts to look for

Stephen Box: 00:11:05

new solutions when you are no longer confined by your normal routines.

Stephen Box: 00:11:11

All right.

Stephen Box: 00:11:11

Next thing is get support right now.

Stephen Box: 00:11:14

This can be from a coach like myself.

Stephen Box: 00:11:16

this can be by joining a community like the, Facebook community I told you

Stephen Box: 00:11:20

about at the beginning of the episode.

Stephen Box: 00:11:22

It can be a group of guys or a single friend that you have.

Stephen Box: 00:11:27

This can be your spouse or your significant other.

Stephen Box: 00:11:31

It doesn't really matter just to get support from somewhere, because I think a

Stephen Box: 00:11:37

lot of times, guys, we tend, especially us as men, we tend to want to think we gotta

Stephen Box: 00:11:44

do it our own, that we have to figure it out and we can't ask anybody for help.

Stephen Box: 00:11:52

But the reality is you ask any man who's ever found themself in a tough

Stephen Box: 00:11:57

situation, They actually asked for help.

Stephen Box: 00:12:01

Did they find it easier working with other people to get help, or did they

Stephen Box: 00:12:05

find it easier working on their own?

Stephen Box: 00:12:07

And unless you chose somebody who really wasn't very helpful at all because

Stephen Box: 00:12:12

that person didn't know what they were doing and they weren't very supportive,

Stephen Box: 00:12:18

then you're gonna say that you found it more beneficial to have help.

Stephen Box: 00:12:21

Okay.

Stephen Box: 00:12:21

So choose wisely, but definitely choose to get a support system from someone else.

Stephen Box: 00:12:28

and I'll just add to this is like a little bit of a bonus before I give

Stephen Box: 00:12:31

you the, the last step here, but not just having support, but guys have

Stephen Box: 00:12:38

some compassion with yourself, right?

Stephen Box: 00:12:41

Like right now, there's been days where I just haven't had energy.

Stephen Box: 00:12:46

There's been days where I just had like a brain fog and.

Stephen Box: 00:12:51

I just couldn't really think straight.

Stephen Box: 00:12:53

And even though I had work to get done, even though there was things I wanted to

Stephen Box: 00:12:56

do, I had to turn the dial back to one.

Stephen Box: 00:13:00

And I had to have compassion with myself that I couldn't be

Stephen Box: 00:13:04

everything I wanted to be that day.

Stephen Box: 00:13:06

And I had to be okay with that.

Stephen Box: 00:13:07

And I had to be forgiving to myself and not beat myself up over it, And in my

Stephen Box: 00:13:12

case, maybe that seems a little easier to you because getting covid is something

Stephen Box: 00:13:17

that's outside of my control, but, Even when you are the one who's responsible

Stephen Box: 00:13:24

for whatever you're going through, even when what you did, your actions

Stephen Box: 00:13:30

directly put you into this circumstance, it might be easier to beat yourself up.

Stephen Box: 00:13:35

But the reality is you still need to have some compassion with yourself.

Stephen Box: 00:13:38

You need to understand.

Stephen Box: 00:13:39

And that brings us to the last thing, which is learn from it.

Stephen Box: 00:13:44

That's the beautiful thing.

Stephen Box: 00:13:45

Like right now.

Stephen Box: 00:13:48

If I had not gone through all this stuff before, if I didn't know all this stuff

Stephen Box: 00:13:52

and I was dealing with what I'm dealing with Covid, what I would be looking at

Stephen Box: 00:13:55

is, even though that's outside of my control and it's not my fault, I would be

Stephen Box: 00:13:59

looking at this from the standpoint of, okay, what areas did I fall behind on?

Stephen Box: 00:14:05

What things just completely fell apart without me present all, could I have

Stephen Box: 00:14:11

made better systems for those things?

Stephen Box: 00:14:13

I.

Stephen Box: 00:14:14

Could I maybe bring someone else into my business to help out with

Stephen Box: 00:14:17

those things, to future-proof and make sure that doesn't happen again?

Stephen Box: 00:14:22

Maybe it's just a one-off thing and I don't need to

Stephen Box: 00:14:24

really worry about it, right?

Stephen Box: 00:14:25

But no matter what, there are lessons that I can take from this

Stephen Box: 00:14:29

and learn from this situation.

Stephen Box: 00:14:32

And if it's something you did to yourself, if you put yourself in

Stephen Box: 00:14:35

this position, even better, right?

Stephen Box: 00:14:37

Because now.

Stephen Box: 00:14:39

You can take that accountability.

Stephen Box: 00:14:40

You can take that responsibility and say, you know what?

Stephen Box: 00:14:42

I did this, but here's why.

Stephen Box: 00:14:44

Here's what happened.

Stephen Box: 00:14:46

Here were the behaviors that I was utilizing that were

Stephen Box: 00:14:51

solving a problem for me.

Stephen Box: 00:14:52

I.

Stephen Box: 00:14:53

But I now can see that maybe they weren't solving the problem as efficiently

Stephen Box: 00:14:56

as possible, and maybe I need to look for some different alternatives.

Stephen Box: 00:15:00

And it goes back to the supporter thing.

Stephen Box: 00:15:01

Maybe you're too close to it to see the alternative.

Stephen Box: 00:15:04

Maybe having that supporter system, having a coach, having a friend that you can rely

Stephen Box: 00:15:08

on who's going to give it to you straight.

Stephen Box: 00:15:10

Those things can actually help you out a lot.

Stephen Box: 00:15:13

if you guys go back and listen to, my episode from last week.

Stephen Box: 00:15:20

There was a really great line in there about, every single person needs to

Stephen Box: 00:15:25

have their own board of directors, A group of five to seven people that

Stephen Box: 00:15:30

you know are going to be honest with you and be real with you, and they're

Stephen Box: 00:15:33

going to be able to tell you the things that you can't tell yourself.

Stephen Box: 00:15:37

And most of the time they're probably gonna have skills that you don't have

Stephen Box: 00:15:40

so they can give you insights that you otherwise would never be able to get.

Stephen Box: 00:15:44

Also, take that same concept and apply that.

Stephen Box: 00:15:48

So that is, Hey guys, that is the five steps for getting yourself back on track.

Stephen Box: 00:15:57

And again, the biggest thing I wanna stress out of this is sometimes

Stephen Box: 00:16:02

it takes a little bit of time.

Stephen Box: 00:16:04

I know a lot of times as guys, we want the solution, we want it fixed right now.

Stephen Box: 00:16:08

And having some patience around that can be extremely tough.

Stephen Box: 00:16:12

and depending on the circumstance, it may not take you very long,

Stephen Box: 00:16:16

but it might be something that you have to really go back and fix.

Stephen Box: 00:16:18

You might have to go back and undo a lot of thinking and a lot of thought processes

Stephen Box: 00:16:24

that led you down the wrong path.

Stephen Box: 00:16:25

Or in my case, something that is outside of control that you

Stephen Box: 00:16:30

just can't really do much about.

Stephen Box: 00:16:31

So that's really for me, the biggest thing guys is.

Stephen Box: 00:16:36

Has the compassion with yourself.

Stephen Box: 00:16:38

Understand that things are gonna take the time they're gonna take.

Stephen Box: 00:16:40

You gotta trust the process.

Stephen Box: 00:16:42

But if you go through these steps, make sure that you got that growth mindset.

Stephen Box: 00:16:47

Figure out your activity levels like on that dial.

Stephen Box: 00:16:52

What does a one look like?

Stephen Box: 00:16:53

What's a 10 look like?

Stephen Box: 00:16:54

What's a five look like?

Stephen Box: 00:16:56

Then figure out where can you be on that dial every day?

Stephen Box: 00:16:59

And just know that zero is never an option, right?

Stephen Box: 00:17:01

We always gotta take some small actions to move ourself forward, away from the

Stephen Box: 00:17:08

setback and toward our future, right?

Stephen Box: 00:17:12

change your environment.

Stephen Box: 00:17:14

If you're finding yourself stuck and you just can't get out, no matter what

Stephen Box: 00:17:18

actions you try to take, try changing your environment and you might be

Stephen Box: 00:17:22

surprised at the impact that can have.

Stephen Box: 00:17:24

Then again, get support and then learn from it, right?

Stephen Box: 00:17:29

See what lessons are available to you.

Stephen Box: 00:17:31

So hopefully you guys got some great value outta that.

Stephen Box: 00:17:34

I appreciate, the patience dealing with my, my voice today.

Stephen Box: 00:17:39

Maybe it doesn't sound as bad as I think it does, but if it does, I appreciate

Stephen Box: 00:17:42

you guys patience and as always, wanna remind you guys that while none of us

Stephen Box: 00:17:48

are born Unshakable, we can all become.

Stephen Box: 00:17:53

Unshakable.

Intro/Outro: 00:17:55

Thank you for listening to the Unshakable Habits

Intro/Outro: 00:17:58

podcast with Coach Stephen Box.

Intro/Outro: 00:18:00

Be sure to hit the subscribe button and help us spread the word by

Intro/Outro: 00:18:04

sharing the podcast with other men.

Intro/Outro: 00:18:06

If you are ready to create Unshakable habits, you can learn more and connect