#101 Why You Slip Back Into Old Patterns
Here is something that might sound strange coming from a coach: you will definitely get stuck again. Not maybe. Definitely. I know this from personal experience, and from working with hundreds of clients over the years.
Somewhere in the next few months the old familiar feeling will come back. The avoiding. The heaviness. The thing on your list you are not touching. What matters is not whether you drift. It is what happens next.
I made a full video on this. Watch it here, or keep reading for the short version.
You are the observer and the giver of meaning
When you drift, two things happen. You observe something: I skipped my session twice this week. And then, usually without noticing, you assign meaning to it: I'm lazy. I knew this wouldn't last. I'll never change.
Listen to what happened there. You observed a skip, and you turned it into a verdict about who you are. A fact leaves you free to act. A verdict closes the case. If I'm lazy, why reschedule? The verdict does not describe the quitting. The verdict does the quitting.
The same week can read like this instead: I skipped twice. That is information about my week, not a verdict on my character. Something about this commitment is not fitting my life yet. Let me look at what.
Structure is your friend
Whatever you commit to, give it a real slot on your calendar, because the calendar does what your memory cannot: when you skip it, you can see that you skipped it. The drift becomes visible while it is one session, not one season.
When you skip, reschedule the same day. Skipping is allowed; vanishing is not. And if the same thing keeps being rescheduled, ask why like a designer, not a judge. In my experience it comes down to one of three things: the wrong time, unprotected time, or an unclear commitment. Not one of those is a character flaw.
And if you fix all of that and you are still skipping, make the commitment smaller. This week, not eventually. Half the time, half the scope, until it fits the life and the energy you actually have. A small thing that happens beats a big thing that does not.
The four step comeback
One, give one commitment that matters a slot: day, time, place. Two, when you skip it, reschedule it the same day. Three, if you skip twice, redesign it: wrong time, unprotected time, or too many open choices. Four, if it is still not happening, shrink it until it is something you actually do.
And build in accountability. My biggest learning from running the Clarity Quest for almost seven years is the accountability people give one another. Not policing each other. Just other people showing up for the work too, falling out of the process and coming back into it, together, without judgement.
If you want to see where and how you are stuck, take the RUT Diagnostic. It is free, it takes three minutes, and it shows you which groove runs deepest, with the way out spelled out.