Am I Behind, Or Did the Timeline Just Change? | EP 588

Life interrupts even the clearest decisions. A launch delayed, a health thing, a caregiving season, and suddenly you're asking: Am I behind?

This minisode is about what actually happens when the timeline changes.

Full show notes, transcript, and chapters at sheilabotelho.com/588

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Transcript

When The Timeline Falls Apart

Sheila 0:01

You made the decision, you were very clear, and then something happened. And it feels like your timeline has fallen apart. Now there's a voice in your head asking if you're behind. This episode is about what's actually true in that moment. Guiding people through seasons like this over the years has shown me a distinction that helps. Through the lens of real lived experience, I'm gonna give you one question that studies the whole thing. What you hear might be the relief you didn't know you were looking for today. Hi, welcome to the podcast. I'm Sheila Botelho, and I believe true success is built from the inside out. This mini sode is designed to help you live into what lights you up this week. This mini sode is all about something I've walked through with people over the years. And this is a question. And the question is this Am I behind? Or did the timeline just change? In the beginning of March, I made a decision. I decided to write my book. And I told you about it on the podcast the following week. And then a few days later, I was in an emergency appendix surgery. I'm completely fine now. Everything went well, thankfully. But that's not really the story. The story is what happened in the weeks after when I came home and I couldn't really do anything. I couldn't write yet. I needed to heal. I needed to be completely offline. I couldn't really even sit. I want to talk about that because I think you've probably lived a version of this. Maybe not surgery, maybe a launch that got delayed, or a hire that fell through. Maybe a season of caregiving that you needed to lead in your personal life, or a health thing in your family. Something that knocked your timeline sideways and left you wondering if you were behind. Well, here's what I noticed in those weeks. There was a pull, the pull of you're behind. I felt it the first day I came home from the hospital. And I felt it again every time I looked at the manuscript, I hadn't yet started. And then one day I sat back down at it, and the strangest thing happened. I realized I wasn't behind at all. I was actually further ahead than I would have been if I had never made the decision at all. Because the decision had been holding ground for me the entire time I was healing, while I was resting, while my body was doing its work, the seed I had planted was still there. I just hadn't seen it bloom yet, obviously. And that was such a relief. The decision didn't need me to be productive in order to stay true to it. The decision held on its own. And I want to give you the way I've been thinking about this because I think it might help you too. A real decision is a seed planted before the storm. The storm doesn't unplant the seed. The storm might delay the bloom, sometimes by days, sometimes by a season, but the seed is still in the ground. This decision that you make is still made. And what got disrupted was the timing of the visible result, but not the decision itself. And this is the part I see people miss all the time. They confuse a delayed bloom with a failed planting. And they look at the timeline that didn't hold, and they assume that the whole decision has to be rebuilt from scratch. But truly, it doesn't. I mean, it might sometimes, but maybe not. The seed is still there. The decision is still working. And let's face it, when we get started again on ideas that we have, they're changing and morphing all the time, anyway. Often we don't know what our next step is until we take the first one. So this happens even on the days that you can't see it, by the way. So here's the one question that I want to leave you with today. Is the decision that you made still true, even though the timeline changed? Notice the words I'm just saying. Not did the timeline hold, because of course it didn't. Timelines almost never hold the way we first draw them out. Real decisions made by real people get tested by real life in life and in business. And the question is whether the decision is still true. Not whether the calendar is true or the launch date or the original plan, the decision underneath all of that. Because if it's still true, you're not behind. You're exactly where a person who made a real decision is supposed to be, who then lived a real life moment. The decision held. Your bloom is coming. And if this is landing for you, I want to point you towards Thursday's episode because the two pair together. Last Thursday, I talked about how to finally make the decision that keeps coming back around. The decision that you've already made before, the one that you keep reiterating. And I walked through my three-part process for finally moving on it. So this is the episode right before this one today. And today's episode here is the companion. So what happens after you make the decision? How do you hold it when the timeline changes? How do you know the seed is still in the ground? So if you haven't listened to it, go back and check it out. Together, they're going to give you the whole arc. And before you move on to the next thing today, take 60 seconds to ask yourself is the decision still true? Just sit with it. Let the answer come to you. And before I let you go, if you want more of this kind of thinking in your inbox each week, Sheila's Notes is the place. It's the deeper, slower version of what we do here. The link is in the show notes. Thank you for tuning in. I'm wishing you a beautiful week ahead, and I'll see you on the next episode.