Getting After It

175 - Adapt or Break: Why the Plan Is Meant to Change

• Brett Rossell • Season 6 • Episode 175

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At some point, every plan stops fitting.

Not because it was bad.
Not because you lacked discipline.
But because life changed.

In this episode of Getting After It, I talk about what to do when the plan you were committed to no longer matches the season you’re in. This isn’t about quitting, lowering standards, or losing momentum. It’s about learning how to adapt without drifting.

We break down:

  • Why people struggle when plans fall apart
  • The difference between discipline and rigidity
  • How to adjust your approach without abandoning your values
  • Why emotional decisions are the fastest way to lose direction
  • A simple framework for adapting when life pushes back

This episode is for runners, builders, parents, creators—anyone trying to stay consistent while life refuses to stay predictable.

The goal doesn’t disappear when the path bends. But the path will bend! Change the approach if you need to. Don’t abandon the standard.

Keep Getting After It.

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I hope today’s episode sparked something within you to pursue your dreams and unlock your true potential. If you found value in it, consider sharing it with someone who might need that same push.

Getting After It is for those who. want to silence their self-doubt. Refuse to be owned by comfort. Understand their limits are man-made and breakable. We live in a time of constant comparison. Social media drowns us in highlight reels and overnight success stories. But what most people don’t see is the grit behind it all. The reps. The quiet mornings. The sacrifices. The failures.

You are just getting started. Keep Getting After It. 

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SPEAKER_00:

You know what time it is. It's time for another episode of the Getin' After podcast. Thank you guys for tuning in. As always, I am happy that you're here. And I'm excited to talk about uh our topic today, to kind of go into a deep dive about what it means to adapt. And if you don't adapt, how that leads to you breaking. And this is all going to be coming from my own personal experience. I feel like I've had a fair share of what it means to learn truly how to adapt your goals in order to promote longevity and long-term success for that specific goal. Because I've I've learned that there's burnout, that there is a rigidity that can be not helpful. And instead, it's it's a little bit more um it deters you from your goals, as strange as that might sound. But at some point, every plan stops fitting. Not because it was a bad plan, uh, not because you were wrong to even make that plan, but because life moved. Your schedule may have changed, your body may have changed, your responsibilities changed, and of course you changed. And suddenly that thing that once felt right and felt easy, it now feels heavy. It's hard to maintain, it's hard to justify, and and that moment matters more than more than people realize is what do you do in that exact moment? Because what you do right there, even when the plan no longer matches reality, that usually determines whether you grow or you quietly stall out. And I want to first start off by saying that plans are temporary by design. We talk a lot about discipline on this podcast. Things like you know, maintaining a structure, having consistency, and those things do matter, they matter a lot, but somewhere along the way, people start treating plans like contracts instead of a tool. It's not supposed to be a contract. When you have a plan, it is a tool to help you stay on track, it is a tool to help you have steps on what the next thing for your your progression is, what your the next thing for your growth could be. And I want to define what a plan is, so let's start by defining what that is, then we'll go from there. A plan is just your best guess at how to move forward given what you knew at that time. That's basically what a plan is. Understanding what you know now, you come up with a plan, and you should be learning through the process, which should also look like you adjusting your plan to make it a little bit more fit, because you're progressing. Anytime you go after, you seek a goal, you're trying to push yourself in many ways, that is a sign that you are progressing. And you need to take the lessons that you learned through those experiences and apply them to whatever plan that you have to make it better. The whole goal is to refine yourself, to improve how you act and improve your habits. That creates a lot of long-term success. And it allows you to be more consistent, it allows you to be more disciplined and dedicated to actually getting after it, making sure that it happens. Um that's all a plan is. It's not a moral commitment, it's not proof of character, even though sometimes it might feel that way. It's not a measure of worth, and it's a working draft. I love to write. And a lot of the times I will write something and then go back and find all these things that I need to change. Like I haven't done a lot of blog posts recently, but blog posts are a great example. I would write my first draft, and then I would meticulously look at things that I needed to change to make it a little bit better. And I would do that three times. Because the first draft is never the best, it's never great. And I want to spend a lot of time with my thoughts and try and get them out as clearly as possible. And the only way to do that is to revise what you've already done. The same principle applies to having plans. Like, it's a working draft. You know, you might have a plan and it might look like, all right, I'm gonna lose 10 pounds this year. But as you start the process, you know, you realize that, like, okay, well, I'm losing weight, but I don't have a lot of muscle. So maybe you say, I want to replace 10 pounds of fat with 10 pounds of muscle, and then you work on that. And maybe along the way you say, Well, I think I need to eat a little bit healthier, like focus on protein. And so the plan is I'm gonna lose 10 pounds, I'm gonna gain muscle by consuming protein and by working out hard. That's how a plan adapts, that's how it works, and there is no problem in having a plan. The problem is refusing to revisit it when those conditions do change. Um right now I'm going through something where I have to adapt my plan. To give you some context, I um I've had my fair share of sticking to plans because I'm I'm a very rigid person. Sometimes that rigidity is a negative thing. Um, like I'm not willing to try new things. I'm I'm so focused on just making sure that I do what I'm supposed to be doing uh in order to you know make that progress, to stay consistent. And a lot of the times like it it wasn't that beneficial for me. And right now, I'm in one of those times. I'm training for two races. The first, high rocks in Vegas uh on February 22nd, and the second is the Sedona 50 mile race, which is on April 25th. And the training for both of those events by itself is very intense. And put them together, and it feels like something that might be a little bit out of my reach, but I I really want to push myself, so I'm trying. And yesterday I showed up for my long run. I had on the docket that I needed to get 14 miles in, which isn't necessarily too long for uh a long run, but my legs felt so heavy. I was beat, tired, and I had zero energy. My legs were more sore than they ever have been up to this moment, which you know I've trained for ultras, I've trained for a sub-three marathon, but the fact that I'm combining so much strength training with running long distances is difficult for me, and it's something I haven't experienced yet. So it is hard, and I'm learning what my body what my body's capable of right now. Obviously, I know it can change, like this is all new training to me, and so if I wanted to stick with it and be dedicated to it, I know my body would adapt. But right now, I'm just in the midst of really challenging myself. So yesterday, when I was running, I only made it about a half mile before I decided that I I didn't think that it was a good idea to keep going. One, because I was tired, and two, I didn't want to risk injury. That's uh that's one of my biggest fears. And having to quit at at a half mile sucks. There's no other way to say it. It just I feel like I'm letting myself down. I feel like I'm letting my brother down because he's my training partner in this, and I feel like I'm letting my wife down because I should be the good example of what it means to really push yourself and to work hard. Uh and most of all, I let myself down. And that's a crappy feeling. And what I have learned through my training is that your body will give you signals on when to push and when to pull back. And yesterday it gave me a clear sign that I needed to pull back. I am under a lot of physical stress right now, and this is uncharted territory for my body. And my body has to adapt, just as I need to adapt to plans changing. I may not have gotten my long run in yesterday, but I plan on doing it. I'm still gonna get it done. When I came home from the gym yesterday, we had a nice day. Um, my wife and I did, and then around 5 p.m. I decided that I was gonna go and try and finish my run to try and get the rest of my miles in and at least just try to see what I could do. Uh I ended up getting eight miles, which not the best, but it's better than nothing. And so I just need to continue to push my body in these ways and to recover well and to adapt as as time goes on to make sure that I can, in fact, I can in fact do what I want to do, and that's do the both of these races. So the point in telling that story is that's just an example of how plans change. Because, you know, it's it's not necessarily great for me to be able to um try and push myself so hard to where the point that I am towing on the line of injury. Um so just a good example there. But why does adjusting feel so uncomfortable? Why is that? And I dug into this a little bit, and here's what I believe actually makes adaptation hard. And first, your identity gets mixed into it. That's a big one. I would say probably the biggest one. We don't just follow plans, we start to see ourselves through them. Like, I'm the person who trains like this, I'm the person who does this every day. This is how my life works. We start to believe those kinds of things. So when something disrupts that rhythm, it feels personal. Like something's being taken away. But oftentimes what's really happening is simpler, and you're just being asked to operate at a different level of awareness. It's like what I was saying with my current situation. I am not one to quit. It's my least favorite thing to do. I hate it above all else. That said, it doesn't reflect who I am. Like, if I notice I need to change and do, then I'm proud of that. In fact, I believe that that shows strength. Like, you need to learn how your body communicates with you. As strange as that might sound, like that does sound pretty weird and hoo-hae and woo-woo-woo. But it's been true throughout many parts of my life. So it does show strength. The second reason I think it's so uncomfortable to change is because there's fear underneath it. Fear that changing the plan means that you're gonna lose momentum. You know, you've worked so hard to this point that you're you fear if you make any adjustments, you'll lose the progress that you've already made. Fear that if you loosen your grip a little bit, everything else will unravel. That's a big one for me. I believe I used to believe that for myself. Um, and that was hard. That was really hard. Uh, there's a fear that adjusting means you weren't serious enough. Like a little pride gets in there, which is it's not a big deal. Like, everyone has to deal with that. But just keep that in mind, is that's not what that's not what that means. Like that whole that fear, it keeps people stuck longer than they need to be. I've been in there and I found this quote from someone named Ann Lander. She says, Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then actually do it. It's not easy. It is not easy to decide to to back off. Like I was saying with my half-mile run, like that was uncomfortable for me in many ways. My body was uncomfortable, but then also my mind was because I felt like I was quitting a little bit. When in reality, it's I just I need to adapt. I need to learn how to um make myself be able to train for both these races while not burning out. Because at the end of every week, it seems that I don't have enough energy for my long runs, and it's been for about three weeks where I haven't gotten the distance that I've wanted to, um, which is not great. But again, I am a human being. I'm trying to get better, and it's just a process, it takes time. The third is that discipline gets misunderstood. This is very important what I'm gonna say. Discipline isn't about doing the same thing forever, it's about continuing to act with intention, even when the approach changes. Do not mistake the two. Let me read the first line again because discipline isn't about doing the same thing forever. There's a quote out there, I'm sure you've heard it, but insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Same thing goes here. Like, if you're just being disciplined to be disciplined without adapting, what good is that doing for you? I wouldn't say anything. Because if the goal is progress, you're just gonna plateau and you're gonna stay there and you're not gonna move, and you're gonna get frustrated because you thought that you'd be somewhere else by this time, when in reality you're not. That's a danger, and I don't want you to get to that point. So do not mistake those two things. You can be disciplined and adapt, you can be disciplined and change how you approach something. I want to make this clear. Adaptation is not a setback. Now, this matters, so pay attention. Adjusting your plan is not the same as backing down. Adjusting your plan is not the same as backing down. Backing down is lowering the standard. And adjusting your goals is protecting it. You want to protect the standards that you hold yourself to. If you tell yourself, okay, I'm gonna hold myself to the highest standard I can, there's a very important line in there. Every I'm gonna hide myself to the highest standard that I can. Do not compare yourself to other people in this. This is a very personal thing, and you need to make sure that you understand what you're trying to accomplish and hold that standard high, but understand that it's gonna be it's gonna be lower than other people's standards, it'll be higher than a lot of other people's standards, you'll meet people right in the middle. But point is everyone is different, and some people like Nick Bear, great example, he holds himself to the highest standard, but his highest standard is you know, he is an incredible athlete, he pushes himself, he runs BPN, which is a a great supplement company, and it's doing really well. And yet, if I tried holding myself to that standard, I wouldn't really progress because I would get frustrated with the training, I wouldn't be at the same level that he is with my uh fitness, and so I'd be digging myself into a hole, trying to hold myself to this standard, but not being able to uh maintain that. Probably have some real harsh feelings about myself at that time, and potentially, and this is the big risk, potentially give up. And that's what we want to avoid here. We don't want to give up. Like you can still show up with effort even if the structure changes, you can still act with integrity even if the timeline shifts, you can still move forward even if the route looks different than expected. The goal doesn't disappear just because the path bends. That idea shows up everywhere. It's not just in training, but it's also in work, in faith, in relationships. Adaptation is key. That's how longevity is achieved. And the Stoics, they understood this well. Marcus Aurelius wrote constantly about responding well to circumstances rather than wishing them away. Not because circumstances don't matter, but because fighting reality wastes energy you could be using to move forward. Now, when things go wrong, when emotions take the wheel, what does that look like? Most poor adaptations don't come from bad thinking, they come from strong emotion. And when you feel like you're in a plateau or you're stuck or you're you're losing that progress, or you feel like you haven't made any, that can lead to frustration, embarrassment, fatigue, and impatience. Those are four very powerful emotions. And that's when people make changes too fast, or they refuse to make them at all. Like they either force a plan that no longer is sustainable, or they abandon structure entirely out of discouragement. That's real. I've dealt with that before. Neither one of those is intentional. One principle that has helped me more than anything is don't redesign your life in the middle of an emotional spike. Do not do that. You can't make changes if you are feeling all these emotions. You need to pause. Pause first, let things settle a bit, and then decide. Clarity shows up when the noise quiets down. Now, I'm gonna tell a story that it's gonna be the first time my mom's heard this story, and mom, I'm sorry in advance. I did lie to you in high school. Um, so I'm sure I'm gonna get a phone call after this. But, anyways, um the ability to pause is a superpower. But like any other skill, it's it's one I had to earn through a series of failures. Growing up, I wasn't exactly the poster child for emotional regulation, I would say. When fr frustration or embarrassment flared up, I didn't process it, I reacted to it. Which I think is common for kids, especially teenagers, going through puberty, you know, dealing with all these emotions and hormone changes. And usually I did react poorly. It was embarrassing. Um, the most vivid reminder of this sits right right in the knuckles of my right hand, right here. These two guys. There's still some scars, which we'll get into. I was a volleyball player, and I loved serving. Serving was probably my favorite thing. Um, you know, I'm tall, I had a very powerful jump serve. Um, one that like I'm I was a middle blocker, and typically they're not great at serves, but I loved serving. I was I was able to always hit it so hard and get it in, um, like place it in the corner of the the court so people had a hard time getting to it. Um but I loved it. And there was one time um when we were at practice and I stepped up to the line. I tossed the ball in the air, did my approach, and smacked it. And it went straight into the net. And I reset, I tried again, and boom. This one goes three feet out of bounds. And this continued for a long time. I think maybe that whole practice, I got three or four serves over. I think I was just trying to hit it as hard as I could. But there was one time where I mean, I truly was at war with myself during this moment. But I remember telling myself, okay, just get this next one over. I kept telling myself that this is the next one. I tossed the ball. I swung with everything I had. And boom, straight into the net again. It didn't even come close. And it it really pissed me off in a blind white hot flash of rage. I didn't take a breath. I didn't count to 10. I didn't pause and and and wait to make a decision. Instead, I spun around and I launched a full force haymaker into the thick blue padding covering the brick wall at the gym. And the sound was not a thud, it was a sickening crunch. That's what it was. The diagnosis was a boxer's fracture, a poetic name for a stupid injury. Um, and it turns out that brick walls don't care how frustrated you are, they always win. Uh they always win the fight. I spent the next few months on the sidelines watching my teammates play while I had metal pins in my hand. And all because I couldn't manage a three-second surge of adrenaline, all because I reacted when my emotions were loud and I let them take control. I learned the hard way that while the emotions are inevitable, the explosion is optional, and there is an immense power in the pause. That's why we're talking about them so much. So I apologize, mom. But I did punch a wall. Standards matter more than scripts do. And this distinction has shaped how I think about discipline. Because scripts are specific, they tell you exactly what to do, and standards are more foundational. Uh, I mean, why do you think I've been talking so much about standard standards in January? Because it really does matter. And I'm trying to give you some tools that you can use to set yourself up for the best year of your life. Professionally, spiritually, uh, physically, with your relationships. I want this to be the best year for you. That only comes from holding yourself to standards. Uh, for example, scripts, on the other hand, they look like weekly mileage, um, schedules, training blocks, routines, all things that are good. But standards look like showing up honestly, putting in real effort, acting with integrity, and taking responsibility. Scripts change. Standards should not. When people feel like they've lost discipline, what usually happened is this the script stopped fitting, and instead of adjusting, they walked away from the standard too. And that's not failure. That is confusion. I believe very cle very much that that is confusion. There's this quote from Victor uh Hugo where he says, Change your opinions, keep your principles, change your leaves, keep in keep intact your roots. And for our conversation here today, change your scripts, keep your standards, and then change your leaves, keep intact your roots. That's the plan. That's the goal. Is the plan, the script, it changes. But your standards should not. You should hold yourself to those. Hold yourself to very high standards if you want a life of growth. I came up with kind of a simple way to adapt without drifting, and it's just four uh little exercise or four questions and uh that you can ask yourself to really help understand where you're at. Uh, when you feel tension between your plan and your life, ask yourself these four things. First, what has actually changed? Not the story, just the facts. List that out. Second, what still matters to me here? Values don't expire when circumstances shift. Third, what's flexible? Volume, pace, format, could be timing. And then fourth, what isn't? The standard that you hold yourself to. I'll answer it for you. That process should keep you inligned without being too rigid. And in my experience, that has been how you achieve goals. Ones that take you a long time, it's through the small actions. Some of the most meaningful progress I've made came after admitting this approach worked, but it doesn't anymore. And that realization isn't weakness. I believe it is awareness. Growth often asks for a new structure, not more force. The people who last aren't the ones with the tightest grip on the plan. They're the ones who can adjust without compromising who they are. Life doesn't stay still long enough for perfect plans. It changes a lot. And what it responds to is steadiness, especially when things don't go how you expected. So this week I want you to take an honest look of one area of your life. What needs adjusting, what absolutely does not. And change the approach if you have to, but don't abandon the standard. That's how you adapt without breaking. It's an important topic. I appreciate you guys for listening. But it is there is so much power when you learn how to change your plan and be okay with that change. Life is change. All of us change every single day. And as you go throughout this week, just pay more attention to things that you believe that you can do better at, that you can make some adjustments to to enhance your progress. Because you can do it. I firmly believe that. I know everyone is capable of doing great things. That includes you. So remind yourself of that. Be the person who picks themselves up and adapts their plan so you don't break. Thank you guys so much for listening to this week's episode. Um if at all you took something from this that helped, please feel free to share with a friend. Um, the show only grows through through you guys. And if you want to leave a rating on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, that also helps uh the show get a little bit more visibility. So I appreciate all the support. It's been so much fun um focusing on these topics in January. But um next month we're gonna talk a lot about how to execute. And I'm hoping to bring on some new guests to kind of share their experiences with that. But thank you guys so much. Stay in the arena, and as always, keep getting after it.