Move the goal posts sideways...

Speaking from my own experience's, one thing I always did was 'set the bar too high' for my own aspirations, which then became expectations.

Whilst you couldn't knock my ambition from an outsiders perspective, on the inside I was un-knowlingly causing myself problems internally.

Walking into a gym after never picking a weight up in your life and giving yourself a week to become the strongest man in that gym - You will laugh, but this was the kind of coping mechanism I would use to channel my focus elsewhere from my addiction and feelings of depression.

Inevitably, as you can imagine... A week later I was not the strongest man in that gym, and as such did not meet the expectations/goals which I had set myself a week earlier. This of course lead to feelings of 'not being good enough' and 'hopelessness', two strong feeling candidates to throw your progress in the bin and head back to the bottle, the bets, the drugs (Or anything you can think of to consume yourself in to forget about life for that short period of time). 

When you read it back, it seems so obvious and comical to think that a process like that would work and the un-needed pressure you create for yourself is just not healthy and not sustainable.

So, the message I want you to take from this post is do not give yourself the smallest area to aim at when trying to score a goal. Move the goal posts sideways, increase your chances of scoring the goal and feel better about your progress. 

Recover with realistic goals and don't feel bad if you don't reach your goals straight away, the learnings you will take from not scoring that goal the first time round will make you all the more bulletproof when lining up to shoot again!