Happy Day-After-Labor-Day! Back to work and back to routine! Are you finding it difficult to get started this morning? Even after just a short break? That’s not surprising, because, for us human beings, discipline is difficult. Once we get out of routine, even briefly, it’s hard to get back in! We feel that nagging ‘uncomfortable’ feeling and it’s hard to get ourselves over that and started again – even if we know that getting back to that routine is going to help us, our customers and our company. But feeling this way is normal. Even though we’d like everything we do to move in a straight-moving-upwards line, that’s not the way things work. What really happens – at home, at work, and in continuous improvement – is that we go “two-steps-forwards…one-step-backwards…one-step-forwards…two-step-backwards…” Vacations, celebrations, illness, circumstances beyond our control like natural disasters can sidetrack us. Problem is, it’s easy to mistake this normal cycle as failure, and in the ‘backwards’ phase, simply give up altogether. Don’t. Recognize that where you are and what you are feeling is normal and…simply start again, remembering that you are actually farther along than you were before and you just need to keep going!
