Yes, as much as this column has over the years told you to always be positive, I am now telling you that you should actually plan to fail.  As shocking as this may seem, I recently read as book about successful goal achievement that had a whole chapter devoted to how to cope with failure and still maintain not only your goal intention, but your self esteem and conviction as well. Living a Healthy Lifestyle, the tag line for this column, has frequently discussed the topics of both goal achievement and self esteem but in the context of success, not failure. OMG, ladies, how could we ever actually fail?

Okay, I am paraphrasing and putting my own slant on this idea, but this is the aim of my comments-failure is bound to happen along the road of life. It is not always going to go your way. You won’t always lose those 5 pounds in the first week. You won’t always get that promotion. He won’t always call on the Monday after a Saturday date.  I may be just guessing here, but I don’t think you will win the millions of Lotto dollars you see on TV. Sometimes life just does not roll your way or mine. When I tell you to plan to fail, I mean just that. Some people call it a Plan B; others call it a fork in the road, and so on. I call it a goal reset alert.

As we set goals for ourselves, the first thing we should do is to be realistic. Yes, you already knew that I am sure. One does not plan to run faster than the speed of light. It is all right to plan to walk your dog up the block every day. That is a good goal. Even a goal as simple as that can be stymied by rain, a hurt knee, a sick dog, and a hundred other things. All I am saying is that you should plan for that and so not let it deter you from your main intention which is to get more exercise. Plan B? Walk around your house, exercise to a DVD that you bought for just that purpose, watch a TV exercise show. Do you see what I am saying? Keep that goal but give yourself what I call “failure resets” as a fall back that keeps the main idea in place.

Plan to save a portion of your paycheck every month and do not be deterred by a mascara sale, but do take the opportunity to double up and make a final payment on a charge card that is making you pay 19% interest. In the long term you will be able to not only make it back, but perhaps even up your savings amount.

It is also good to change a goal that has turned out to be unrealistic. Maybe you thought you could finish that project in a week, but it looks like a bit more than that if you plan to do a good job. Make “doing a good job” the goal instead of that finish in a week deadline that will compromise quality. We are all stubborn and prideful when it comes to meeting goals and that is a good thing until it becomes a road block to actually completing something that not only means you have finished, but finished well. All I am saying is that if that happens, don’t let it get to you and don’t let others question your reset. Don’t let “Oh, you didn’t finish on time” take the place of doing a job that will earn you more kudos and self esteem than you would ever have had if you finished on time and did a half way job. That “poor to fair” rating sticks with you for a long time, honey.

These truths apply so much to things like portion control and food choices.  Let’s say that  you decide to only have 900 calories today and someone brings homemade éclairs to the break room.  Perhaps you will chose to tough it out, but you may also have one and watch it at dinner time, or simply wait until tomorrow to reset your goal. If this is part of a long term plan, and it certainly should be, one day and one slip will not kill anyone. You must just know that it is a slip and not a reversion to old bad habits. In fact most surveys dealing with food consumption tell us that to deprive yourself of the occasional slip is eventually going to take  you to binge failure hell.

Back to the plan to fail or what I would better term as “open options.” That sounds a lot better doesn’t it? Yogi Berra has said famously that when you come to a fork in the road you should take it. I am seconding that comment. I am also adding that you should look forward to the possibility that things may not go in one and only one way to be successful. Plan carefully but always look to the future as an open book rather than the list you have pinned to your fridge. I think you may well redefine success, but enjoy the things that go in a way that makes you happy. After all, in the end isn’t that what makes life interesting?   Love, Judith

PS-Look for new recipes, reprints of Skating Uphill  articles, and interesting comments  at my BLOG: www.skatinguphill.com.