How to Deal with Inevitable Disruption in a Transformation Process

When we decide to change ourselves or when we are in charge of a transformation project, things will never go as per the plan. Events will inevitably happen that disrupt our well-thought expected sequence of activities.

Leo Babauta in his post ‘starting, over and over again‘ deals with this issue in the context of trying to gain new habits, but of course the concept can be used in a wider range of situations.

His recommendations are to avoid feeling bad about the disruption but rather to implement the following process:

When you get disrupted, notice any tendency to be harsh with yourself about it, or resentful towards life or other people about the disruption.
Shake off that feeling and instead, tell yourself that life is an uncontrollable river and you just have to flow with it.
Shrugging off any past mistakes, focus on starting again. Just like before, focus on taking the tiniest step.
If there’s any learning to take from the previous attempt, adjust your method to account for whatever obstacles you faced.

Above all, his recommendation is not to be too harsh on oneself. Disruption just happens. It is not the fault of anyone. So let’s move on and continue our transformation, becoming wiser in the process.