What to Do When Things Don’t Work Out Like We Planned

Homar Robledo Mar 20, 2012 · 2 min read

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Its funny how sometimes we run into obstacles in our life and things don’t work out like we thought they would.

We most times don’t have control over what happens around us, but the one thing we do have control over is ourselves. When things don’t work out as planned we have a choice to keep moving forward, we have a choice to change the direction we’re going, or we have a choice to just give up. What would you do?

It’s interesting to see how a very small change in our past made a huge difference in our present. Usually when things don’t work out like we planned, most of the time we choose the easy, more comfortable way out. What do I mean by this? I mean we tend to stay in our comfort zone. When we stay in our comfort zone, we stop growing.

I like to think of it this way. Picture or draw a small circle with a dot in the middle. The dot symbolizes you and the circle symbolizes your comfort zone. Every time you step outside your comfort zone, the circle gets a little bit bigger. You take just one step away from you comfort zone and the circle grows a little bit more. Make sense?

So what exactly are we suppose to do when things don’t work out as planned? In order to know what to do in a situation like this, we must first know where we want to be. Remember the three choices: keep moving forward, change our direction, or give up. Do you want to keep trying to succeed in whatever it was that didn’t work out? Do you want to change your direction? Or, do just simply want to give up? This takes us back to our comfort zone. Do you want to explore and see what is outside your circle? Obviously if you want to grow mentally you need to do some things that are going to make you a little bit uncomfortable at times. You need to think of how your actions are going to affect your future in a week from today, in a month from today, in a year from today, in 5 years from today.

Below is a video that I was watching earlier and I found it very interesting. It teaches us just how close we are from achieving whatever results we want. When you’re only a millimeter away from what you want, nothing is impossible. When a golf player hits the ball straight in the center the ball is going to go straight, but when he tilts the golf club just one millimeter to the left or to the right, the ball goes way further in the long run than only one millimeter.

If you have goals or dreams, I say do something every single day to get you closer to them. Even when things don’t work out, keep doing it. Eventually you’ll learn what it is you’re doing wrong and how to fix your mistakes.