What's your Tyson plan?

Boxer Mike Tyson is known for many things...including his comment about plans: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

Thankfully most of us will never be punched by Mike Tyson—or, in all likelihood, anyone else.

But all of us have plans. And all of us will be derailed from those plans by some unexpected—or even expected but more powerful that we had thought—setback…something that might metaphorically stun us, or put us back on our heels, or even knock us down. We know it is somewhere between highly likely and inevitable that we’re going to get that punch in the face…no matter what we do. So while it does make sense to avoid it, at some point it is likely to happen anyway.

The metaphorical punch can derail us from the original plan—the one that worked so well to get us to that point! And instead of returning to the principles—whether those are mindset, or strategic, or technical, etc.—that got us there, we react to the punch.

The best game plans anticipate that punch, even recognizing that we can’t possibly know exactly when it will happen. That doesn’t eliminate the surprise when it comes, but it does give us the chance to plan ahead for how we’ll react. The first step needs to be a recalibration—"what just happened? Where am I now? Am I okay?” From there, we need to get back to operating from our strengths—not to just respond to the new reality, but to reimpose our will on it with the mindset and discipline we brought to the effort in the first place. That is hard to do…but if we don’t do it, we run the risk of the spiral that inevitably comes when we respond only to the punch.

What’s your Tyson plan?

Think about something important to you right now. Jot down some ways in which you could get derailed. How will you gather yourself mentally to recover? What mindset will you take? How do you reestablish your equilibrium and mindset to move forward?