There is victory in failure

When working towards something there are inevitably going to be tough times.  You will be faced with tough decisions, setbacks, and plenty of distractions.  The key is staying focused and learning from your failures.  If we look at this as a big picture kind of post, let's say a failure would be either falling off of your diet really hard, or not getting any workouts in for a full week.  What you need to do when something like this happens is take a look back and figure out two things:

1. What went wrong? 

2. How do I fix this?

Maybe you got super busy and couldn't make it to the gym or out for a run or bike ride or whatever.  Keep in mind you don't need to always spend hours fulfilling your workout requirements, and something is always better than nothing.  If you have literally 10 minutes try this.... take 5 of those minutes and try to do as many burpees as possible (this is going to suck tremendously; there will be nothing fun about it and you'll be gasping for air and sweating when the 5 minutes is up BUT IT'S ONLY 5 MINUTES SO YOU CAN DO IT!!!), use the other half of your 10 minute window to get yourself back together, maybe a super quick shower so you don't smell like you just did 60 burpees. Everyone you come into contact with the rest of the day will appreciate that.  That's it! Done in 10 minutes, and trust me you'll feel like you did plenty of work. You don't need any equipment for this, you could do it at any time of the day and in any location.  BOOM no more excuses there, problem solved, YOU'RE WELCOME!!! (If you don't know what burpees are, Google or YouTube can easily help you out, and eventually I'll post a video on here for them as well.)  

Now if falling off of your diet was the issue, that's a bit tougher to deal with.  What you need to do is go back and look at the day/days in question.  Maybe there wasn't much you could do about it, there were a bunch of social events that you had to go to and the food options were bad.  Well, these things happen from time to time. Next time try eating before you go to an event, that way you aren't 100% dependent on eating when you get there.  This way if the food options are a bit off from your diet you can maybe snack a little bit (so you don't look rude) and that'll be that.  You can also try to keep some healthy snacks in your car, or if you carry a bag.  Nothing major, but some nuts, or trail mix, or a Cliff bar or something along those lines.  

This post can also be looked at on a smaller scale.  Maybe you were in the middle of a tough set and failed a rep, or running trying to beat your fastest mile and couldn't quite get there.  Is it disappointing? Sure it is, but you can learn from this also. Maybe as you approached the end of your set, you fatigued and your form broke down, causing you to not be able to finish strong.  Or maybe during your run you started too fast and didn't have enough left in the tank to keep the pace.  Or you could've been on pace and got a little too excited about it, and started to mess up your breathing rhythm a bit.  Whatever it is, there is probably something you can find that sabotaged your would-be triumphant moment.  The key is to figure out what it was, learn from it, use it as motivation, and make sure you make the correction next time.  Work on your form, stay focused, breath deep.  GOOD LUCK.