What I Learned From Today's Mistake

For the past two nights I've gone to bed very late and woke up
very early.

So it was no surprise when this morning I woke up at 8am and felt
awful.

I had two one-hour phone appointments. One from starting at 9am
and the other starting at 10am.

So it wasn't until 11am that I could do most of my Psycho-
Cybernetics exercises like practicing relaxation, recalling past
successes and visualizing myself as the person I want to be.

This energized me for a while but then I had more phone
appointments and lunch and in between everything I did I tried to
take a nap unsuccessfully.

During this time I never did one of the most valuable activities
I could do. An activity that might have helped me regain my
energy and help me to solve the real problem that was causing me
to feel so low.

The activity is my daily goal-setting exercise.

I never got to it today.

And it wasn't until this evening that I realized that I had a
fever that was causing me to feel ill.

Had I set my daily goal I might have decided that my goal was to
feel healthy and strong.

I would have seen myself as healthy and strong and then recalled
the steps I took to achieve this goal.

Then I would have written out the steps and I may have noticed
some important facts and what they meant.

One, I felt hot.

Two, my head hurt.

Three, my body ached.

All clues that I may have had a fever.

And even if I did not have a fever, one solution to all these
symptoms would have been obvious--take some aspirin.

I did this in the evening, made some chicken noodle soup for
myself and a few hours later I felt fine.

Now there is no way I could know for sure that I would have
noticed all these things if I had set my daily goal earlier in
the day.

However, based on my past experiences I've noticed that my
thinking becomes extremely clear when I do my daily goal-setting
exercise.

All of a sudden I'll notice resources that can help me achieve my
goal or I'll notice people who can help.

Often I'll remember things I learned long ago that can help me
today.

So it's not a big stretch to think I would have better diagnosed
my problem and solved it had I done my goal setting earlier.

And in the future that's what I'll do.

When tired, ill or being faced with any problem I'll immediately
do my goal setting exercise. I'll focus on what I want so that I
won't miss such obvious solutions in the future.