Sometimes you have to Change Plans to reach your Goals

I have found that sometimes it is necessary to change plans in order to reach my goal. In fact all my goals seem to have been arrived at using a different path then I originally anticipated. This is not always such a bad thing because if life were too predictable it would become boring fast. The trick is to stay adaptable and be able to tell the difference between a change of plan that is required and one that is just an excuse to give up. The ability to tell between these two motives for change is important because otherwise I could end up spending a long time on the wrong path or never reach the goal because I keep changing direction.

Hitting Targets Instead of Dogs

I recently posted about my hopes to one day fight Muay Thai here in Thailand even though I’m now in my forties . In order to reach this goal I have set some targets for myself and made a few plans. I want to make sure that I’m in good physical condition before going anywhere near a Muay Thai gym. Part of my plan was to go cycling every day, but this turned out to be harder than I expected due to a few recent run-ins with the local dog population (see my previous entry here). I have grown to enjoy these daily outings, for the most part, but the dog problem is something I’m finding hard to deal with. I don’t want to go around kicking dogs, or hitting them with sticks, but that seems to be the only way to deal with them if you want to regularly ride a bike around here. It has gotten so that I dread going out on the bike. I have never had any problems with dogs before, but for some reason I just feel more vulnerable on a bike.

Now I probably could go on with these daily cycles and view it as some type of test – beating my fear of these K9s. I don’t need to do this though. To reach my goal it is not necessary for me to ride the bike every day. I still plan to go out on it occasionally but not as part of my fitness regime. My wife is not be impressed with this change of plan because she suspects that the bike will become another of my fad toys that ends up just gathering dust.

I sometimes can be a bit hard on myself but changing plans goes with the territory. I tell myself that as long as I’m moving towards the original goal that’s the main thing. If I was to abandon the goal altogether well that would be a different story; cycling a bike on a daily basis was never my goal though. Other parts of my plan are going well and I’m skipping and working out on the punch bag six days a week. I’m also using some aerobic DVDs. I’m moving towards my goal but not the way I originally planned – not too much of a problem.