Stop Hitting The Reset Button (Do This Instead)

If you’re often finding yourself thinking that you need to “hit the reset button,” start over, or have a fresh start… the truth is, you need to stop hitting the reset button.

My name is Jimena Ramirez. I’m a behavior change coach and the director of Coaching and Environment Strategy here at Body Brain Alliance.

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We usually have this idea of what success and progress looks like. We tend to think that it is a straight line, and if something gets in the way of that, we need to start over.

However, we are only applying this to goals that feel scary, big, or unattainable.

Because when we consider how many things we do every day, we do a lot of things where we are encountering obstacles — and that is not really getting in our way. We’re not trying to get a fresh start from that.

For example: Think about getting yourself places… Maybe you’re driving your kids to school, and you hit a stoplight. You don’t tell yourself, “Well, now I have to come back home and start over.”

You’re just seeing this as a part of the road. Even though it’s not as perfect as you thought — maybe you were hoping for all green lights — you’re moving on. You’re continuing your drive.

The same thing should apply to our goals. Things will happen, but they are not a sign that we need to turn around and go back home. Obstacles are a normal part of the road.

When we encounter an obstacle and choose to start over, we do two things. First, it feels discouraging because we’re telling ourselves that what we did didn’t count — that it didn’t really help us towards our goals. We negate the progress we’ve made and get ourselves back to square one.

Maybe what we want to think about changing here is not avoiding failure on our way to success — but how we can respond to failure differently.

What if we could see failure a bit more neutrally, instead of thinking that the only thing that gives us value is success?

Failure can actually be your best teacher. Failure can be your GPS that tells you exactly what you need to tweak — but we rarely pay attention to it. We’re so busy thinking about how we need to start over and get it right, that we’re not using that really valuable information from our previous experience.

Here’s What To Do Instead

• Pause
• Take a moment to accept
• Reflect
• Then keep going

Pausing and accepting means that we can take a moment to think about how we feel. To really validate that — we don’t need to gaslight ourselves or tell ourselves that everything is okay.

We can validate how this feels, that it doesn’t feel good, that we are disappointed — and we can do that without buying into the narrative that this means we should quit. Those two things don’t need to go together.

You can choose how you are going to respond — not based on emotion, but based on your plans and your desires.

You can also choose to reflect:

• What is this teaching me?
• What can I actually get out of this?
• How am I going to apply this to come out wiser and use it towards success?

And lastly, we dust ourselves off and keep going.

Failure is going to show up a number of times towards any goals that you’re working on. And this doesn’t mean it’s a sign to quit. It is simply one more thing along the way, like a stoplight.

You’ll actually be making a lot more progress if you take this approach — and you will be coming out a lot wiser, and more strategic about not making the same mistakes again.

The Main Takeaway

We can’t avoid failure, and maybe we shouldn’t even try — because failure is actually giving us a lot of information about what to tweak as we pursue our goals.

Instead, we want to make sure that we’re creating neutrality around it, so that we are not allowing it to take the wheel about what we’re going to do next.

Thank you for reading, see you in the next one!