A signal, not a setback

0:03Speaker 1:Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's tip is to view slip ups on the way toward a goal as a signal, not a setback. When approached with curiosity, these failures can give very useful information. So a few weeks ago I welcomed Ruby Reula as a guest to this show. Ruby is a screen time strategist and she had all sorts of ideas for spending less time on our phones. One of her key pillars is that when you find yourself scrolling more or more frequently than you mean to, you should view this as a signal, not a setback. You don't need to decide that you have failed and throw in the towel on it t your goals. Instead, you can look at what happened and figure out what you can from the sequence of events.

1:08Speaker 1:What led you to pick up your phone, why did you start scrolling, What time of day was it, what was happening, what was your mood? Where did you go first, why did you stay? Knowing the answers to these questions, that is interpreting the signal, can help you make smarter choices for next time. If you tend to scroll endlessly when you are bored, well you can figure out how to put more interesting things in your lives so you can spend less time on doing this. I think this is a good approach to building any sort of habit or achieving any sort of goal. A slip up is not a failure. It is a signal, not a setback.

1:55Speaker 1:Something in your original approach might need tweaking to account for life as it is, or for complications that you might not have originally seen. For instance, maybe you're trying to drink less coffee in the afternoon, but you find yourself almost nodding off during a two pm meeting, so you grab an espresso rather than brating yourself when you are still wired at ten pm. You can analyze this situation. How much are you sleeping at night? When are you waking up, Why do you wake up at that time?

2:29Speaker 1:What does your morning caffeine intake look like? When do you find yourself getting sleepy through the day? Is there anything you can do to change that? Are there other ways you can boost your energy? Or maybe there are ways to make that two pm meeting less boring. I don't know, but we can approach this with curiosity and try to interpret the signal rather than viewing ourselves as terrible, weak willed people. Building a sustainable habit is not about never having any setbacks. It's about learning from these setbacks so you can keep going even when life is what it is. We often design our habits for perfect situations, then get frustrated when these perfect situations don't continually exist.

3:21Speaker 1:But viewing setbacks as signals allows us to refine our goals and figure out new ideas that might make success possible. In the meantime, This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.