135. Falling off the Wagon: How to Recommit without Guilt
Have you ever started a new habit or routine, only to suddenly find yourself completely off track? That moment when you realize you've "fallen off the wagon" can trigger a spiral of guilt and self-judgment that makes it even harder to start again. It's a common experience I see with my design clients across various aspects of their businesses, from planning and time management to setting fees and maintaining boundaries.
These moments of deviation aren't failures at all, they're essential parts of the change process. When designers worry about falling off the wagon (sometimes before they've even started), it often reveals deeper issues of self-trust. That fear can be paralyzing, preventing you from taking the first step toward meaningful change in your business.
In this episode, I share how to approach these inevitable moments of inconsistency with curiosity instead of judgment. By dropping the entire construct of "the wagon," you can build genuine self-trust that leads to sustainable change. This shift in perspective helps you recover faster from setbacks, and it transforms how you approach growth in your design business altogether. The goal isn't perfection; it's reducing the time between deviation and realignment, while being kind to yourself throughout the journey.
If you've been thinking about working with me one-on-one, be sure to get on the private coaching waitlist! Click here to learn more about Design to Thrive and secure your spot to be the first to know when availability opens up.
What You’ll Discover from this Episode:
How to recognize when fear of "falling off the wagon" is preventing you from starting new habits.
Why moments of inconsistency are actually valuable learning opportunities, not failures.
The importance of reducing the time between deviation and realignment rather than seeking perfect consistency.
How to identify the specific reasons behind your habit disruptions to create more sustainable systems.
Why building self-trust is more powerful than relying on willpower for long-term change.
How to replace guilt and judgment with curiosity when you notice you've strayed from your intentions.
The connection between self-compassion and sustainable change in your design business.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
If you love what you’re learning on the show, and want to learn how I can support you, click here to learn more about coaching.
Click here for the latest workshops and free resources.
Follow me on Instagram!
Sign up to my Monday Mindset email list to get bite-sized insights on topics that you can use to set your week up for success!
Get my free Life & Business Vision Journal!
Check out my CEO Summer School series!
127. How Design Retreats Can Help You Grow Your Business with Jennifer Davis
Full Episode Transcript:
Hey designer, you're listening to episode 135. In this one, we're talking about falling off the wagon. Those moments when you're cruising along with a new habit or routine, and then you have a slip-up. Maybe it's just for a moment, maybe it was months ago and you keep telling yourself you'll get back to it tomorrow. Whatever it is. Today, I want to share how to get back to doing what you know you want to be doing without the guilt and judgment, and how actually dropping the construct of the wagon is crucial to your sustainable change.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place.
I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
Hello designer, welcome back to the podcast. I'm sitting down, it's a beautiful day, and this is the first one I'm recording after being at the Midwest Design Retreat. As you might remember, Jennifer Davis was on the podcast recently sharing the details of the Midwest Design Retreat. And now it's actually happened, and I have to say, it was incredible. The speakers that I shared the stage with, the other designers that I got to meet. I mean, it was really, really special. We even had great weather for it and got to go to all of these different events in addition to the really intimate conversations and connections that were had.
I've been doing definitely some more in-person events and speaking this year, and I got to say, it's been fun. So, we'll see what unfolds for the rest of the year. Who knows?
Today, what I want to talk about is falling off the wagon. I think most of us, at some point have used that phrase. I hear it a lot from my clients. And it's something that can really come up at any stage in your business and also just in your personal life too. So I thought this would be a great one to bring to the podcast.
Now, when I hear a client say, "I've fallen off the wagon," it's typically around habits and behaviors that they wanted to change and have started to change. It'll come up around topics like planning or time management, where maybe you have a method you want to be consistently using to plan out your business or your day. It could even be around setting fees where this designer had decided to increase fees, but then kind of had a wobbly moment, and then ended up charging less.
Sometimes it might be around letting boundaries slide with clients, you know, that "Oh, just this once," little voice that's in your head. Or around accountability with employees, maybe with consistency, posting to social media or following through on some type of content that you share for your marketing. The concept of falling off the wagon can come up in so many different ways.
There's typically two ways this shows up in coaching conversations I have with my designers. Now, the first one is a worry about falling off the wagon before they're even on the wagon. So, it's a concern that they're going to slide back into old ways before they've even started to make the change in any measurable way. There's typically a lot of what-ifs, like, what if I can't keep this up? What if I don't follow through? Talking about it as if it's happening to them and it's out of their control. Typically when this is the case, it's an issue of self-trust. You're not trusting yourself to make the change, and you're also not trusting yourself to keep the change in motion. And this worry or fear around falling off the wagon actually prevents the client from getting started.
The other time this tends to show up is when a designer has implemented a new set of behaviors or routines, and they were doing it, and then they're not. So, this will be you're on the wagon, and then you fell off. And I mean, I'm laughing because I've always thought this imagery of the wagon is quite funny. What I picture is you riding through the Wild West in your covered wagon, and you just sort of flop off. You fall off, and then the wagon keeps going. No one stops for you, no one circles back, and you are just dunzo.
When in actuality, that is not it at all. What I really want you to hear is falling off the wagon, meaning doing something and then not doing it, and then hopefully committing to doing it again, that's what we'll talk about in a bit, is actually part of the process of change. Changing something in your life is rarely like a light switch or a situation where you've got one shot, and if you don't get it, you're lost.
The way that I see it is that evolving your beliefs and your actions to create the outcomes that you want, personally and professionally, really boils down to a very extended series of small decisions, moment by moment decisions, learning about yourself, both in what's working and what's a total flop, and then staying committed to the outcome, even when you don't have a lot of evidence to back you up.
I see this so clearly in myself and in the designers that I coach, and it's going to happen that there will be times when you completely breeze past your own intentions and you won't realize it until after the fact. And then there's going to be times when you consciously think about what you said you were going to do and then completely dismiss your own moment of awareness.
I want you to plan on this. It's really not a problem that you've fallen off the wagon, unless you judge yourself for it and make it mean that you can't stick with whatever the thing is or count on yourself. Typically, when missteps or failures are riddled with our own internal shame and guilt, that's when you have those screw it moments and give up for months, hoping to gear yourself up to try again, which of course is the exact opposite of what you want. You're delaying the integration and the outcome that you're working to create.
Once you accept that you're going to have these quote unquote “failures,” as you create new habits and routines, then what I want you to do is get curious about what happened and why. This is honestly the way you get back on this wagon. There is always a reason why you didn't do the thing you said you wanted to do. As soon as you notice, "Oh, hey, that thing that I said I was going to do didn't happen," look at it. There's going to be a lesson that you can use there. Maybe it's that you need to dial in your planning in some way, thinking ahead further, or maybe breaking things down so they feel more approachable.
Maybe you've set the bar so high for yourself, and it's representative really of where you want to be in the long run, but totally neglects to meet you where you are. So, of course, it's too high of a hurdle to jump. Maybe you're using a lot of willpower to force yourself into action versus creating intrinsic motivation, which is much more sustainable fuel. Or maybe even something has changed with your circumstances in your business or your personal life, and you haven't paused to re-decide how you want to react to that.
There are just so many reasons why you could have been cruising along and then you weren't. So, let's get to know them. Because, like I said, this is how you know what to do or try next. You want to get the lesson as soon as you can and then decide how you're going to use the lesson learned to begin again.
I came across a quote this morning from Joan Didion and it said, "Life changes in the instant, the ordinary instant." And now, Joan might not have been thinking about falling off the wagon when she said that, but it really struck me because it hits to the core of behavior change. Any instant is an opportunity to re-engage with what you know would support you or what has served you in the past. Any single instant, it could be right this moment.
The real goal isn't to have a never-ending streak of days or never have a moment of failure, which, as a side note, I love to call failure a learning moment. To me, that's just what it is, and it sounds so much more gentle in my self-talk. So, feel free to grab that for yourself. But typically, what is best when we're thinking about creating a change? The first goal is simply to reduce the amount of time it takes between not doing what you wanted and doing it again. So, the goal is to reduce the time between being on the wagon and off the wagon. And supporting this idea of lessening the time between on and off cycles is, of course, the way that you talk to yourself and learning to be kind as you learn.
What happens is over the course of weeks, months, years even sometimes, depending on what you're wanting to shift, the cycles shorten, eventually leading you to where you want to be. This all requires self-trust. And as much as this image of the wagon and us falling on and off it kind of just makes me laugh, I really want you to think about that there is no wagon. Because when you have self-trust, it's not an issue of if you're on or off because you know you're going to continue to move forward. There's always a path forward. You don't need the wagon.
When you lean into self-trust when you're working towards a change, what ends up happening is you build it when you have your own back throughout this process. You become the person who extends the hand and helps you back up off the ground. And guess what? Releasing this worry or judgment and just the whole idea of the wagon actually leads to quicker, more easeful change. Even better is that these changes become sustainable. Now, it doesn't mean they have to be entirely consistent. It doesn't mean you have to do them every day. It doesn't mean you can't have moments where you don't do them at all. But when you trust yourself to begin again, there's no question of whether or not you will. You just do.
I think that is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself as a designer CEO. I hope that this concept was helpful, and I'd love to hear from you what you thought about it, if you've been implementing it, what type of shift it's maybe caused for you. You can always send me an email or otherwise send me a message on Instagram. I'm @desicreswell.
I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. I want to make sure, too, that you are following the show. I've got some behind-the-scenes on how I'm structuring my summer slowdown this year, along with an announcement for the CEO Summer School series that is coming back in June, and you're going to hear it all on the podcast. All you have to do is go to your podcast app and click that follow button, and then the episode will just appear in your feed, and you won't have to go looking for it.
You can also subscribe to Monday Mindset, which is my weekly newsletter, and that is a great way to be the first one to know when these different opportunities arise. You'll find that at desicreswell.com/monday-mindset. And of course, all of that will be in the show notes as well.
Alright, that is what I have for you. I am wishing you a beautiful week, and I'll talk to you next Wednesday.
Thanks for joining me for this week's episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit DesiCreswell.com, where you’ll get immediate access to a variety of free resources to help you take what you learn on the podcast and put it into action. And if you love what you’re hearing, be sure to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I’ll talk to you next week.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place.
I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
Hello designer, welcome back to the podcast. I'm sitting down, it's a beautiful day, and this is the first one I'm recording after being at the Midwest Design Retreat. As you might remember, Jennifer Davis was on the podcast recently sharing the details of the Midwest Design Retreat. And now it's actually happened, and I have to say, it was incredible. The speakers that I shared the stage with, the other designers that I got to meet. I mean, it was really, really special. We even had great weather for it and got to go to all of these different events in addition to the really intimate conversations and connections that were had.
I've been doing definitely some more in-person events and speaking this year, and I got to say, it's been fun. So, we'll see what unfolds for the rest of the year. Who knows?
Today, what I want to talk about is falling off the wagon. I think most of us, at some point have used that phrase. I hear it a lot from my clients. And it's something that can really come up at any stage in your business and also just in your personal life too. So I thought this would be a great one to bring to the podcast.
Now, when I hear a client say, "I've fallen off the wagon," it's typically around habits and behaviors that they wanted to change and have started to change. It'll come up around topics like planning or time management, where maybe you have a method you want to be consistently using to plan out your business or your day. It could even be around setting fees where this designer had decided to increase fees, but then kind of had a wobbly moment, and then ended up charging less.
Sometimes it might be around letting boundaries slide with clients, you know, that "Oh, just this once," little voice that's in your head. Or around accountability with employees, maybe with consistency, posting to social media or following through on some type of content that you share for your marketing. The concept of falling off the wagon can come up in so many different ways.
There's typically two ways this shows up in coaching conversations I have with my designers. Now, the first one is a worry about falling off the wagon before they're even on the wagon. So, it's a concern that they're going to slide back into old ways before they've even started to make the change in any measurable way. There's typically a lot of what-ifs, like, what if I can't keep this up? What if I don't follow through? Talking about it as if it's happening to them and it's out of their control. Typically when this is the case, it's an issue of self-trust. You're not trusting yourself to make the change, and you're also not trusting yourself to keep the change in motion. And this worry or fear around falling off the wagon actually prevents the client from getting started.
The other time this tends to show up is when a designer has implemented a new set of behaviors or routines, and they were doing it, and then they're not. So, this will be you're on the wagon, and then you fell off. And I mean, I'm laughing because I've always thought this imagery of the wagon is quite funny. What I picture is you riding through the Wild West in your covered wagon, and you just sort of flop off. You fall off, and then the wagon keeps going. No one stops for you, no one circles back, and you are just dunzo.
When in actuality, that is not it at all. What I really want you to hear is falling off the wagon, meaning doing something and then not doing it, and then hopefully committing to doing it again, that's what we'll talk about in a bit, is actually part of the process of change. Changing something in your life is rarely like a light switch or a situation where you've got one shot, and if you don't get it, you're lost.
The way that I see it is that evolving your beliefs and your actions to create the outcomes that you want, personally and professionally, really boils down to a very extended series of small decisions, moment by moment decisions, learning about yourself, both in what's working and what's a total flop, and then staying committed to the outcome, even when you don't have a lot of evidence to back you up.
I see this so clearly in myself and in the designers that I coach, and it's going to happen that there will be times when you completely breeze past your own intentions and you won't realize it until after the fact. And then there's going to be times when you consciously think about what you said you were going to do and then completely dismiss your own moment of awareness.
I want you to plan on this. It's really not a problem that you've fallen off the wagon, unless you judge yourself for it and make it mean that you can't stick with whatever the thing is or count on yourself. Typically, when missteps or failures are riddled with our own internal shame and guilt, that's when you have those screw it moments and give up for months, hoping to gear yourself up to try again, which of course is the exact opposite of what you want. You're delaying the integration and the outcome that you're working to create.
Once you accept that you're going to have these quote unquote “failures,” as you create new habits and routines, then what I want you to do is get curious about what happened and why. This is honestly the way you get back on this wagon. There is always a reason why you didn't do the thing you said you wanted to do. As soon as you notice, "Oh, hey, that thing that I said I was going to do didn't happen," look at it. There's going to be a lesson that you can use there. Maybe it's that you need to dial in your planning in some way, thinking ahead further, or maybe breaking things down so they feel more approachable.
Maybe you've set the bar so high for yourself, and it's representative really of where you want to be in the long run, but totally neglects to meet you where you are. So, of course, it's too high of a hurdle to jump. Maybe you're using a lot of willpower to force yourself into action versus creating intrinsic motivation, which is much more sustainable fuel. Or maybe even something has changed with your circumstances in your business or your personal life, and you haven't paused to re-decide how you want to react to that.
There are just so many reasons why you could have been cruising along and then you weren't. So, let's get to know them. Because, like I said, this is how you know what to do or try next. You want to get the lesson as soon as you can and then decide how you're going to use the lesson learned to begin again.
I came across a quote this morning from Joan Didion and it said, "Life changes in the instant, the ordinary instant." And now, Joan might not have been thinking about falling off the wagon when she said that, but it really struck me because it hits to the core of behavior change. Any instant is an opportunity to re-engage with what you know would support you or what has served you in the past. Any single instant, it could be right this moment.
The real goal isn't to have a never-ending streak of days or never have a moment of failure, which, as a side note, I love to call failure a learning moment. To me, that's just what it is, and it sounds so much more gentle in my self-talk. So, feel free to grab that for yourself. But typically, what is best when we're thinking about creating a change? The first goal is simply to reduce the amount of time it takes between not doing what you wanted and doing it again. So, the goal is to reduce the time between being on the wagon and off the wagon. And supporting this idea of lessening the time between on and off cycles is, of course, the way that you talk to yourself and learning to be kind as you learn.
What happens is over the course of weeks, months, years even sometimes, depending on what you're wanting to shift, the cycles shorten, eventually leading you to where you want to be. This all requires self-trust. And as much as this image of the wagon and us falling on and off it kind of just makes me laugh, I really want you to think about that there is no wagon. Because when you have self-trust, it's not an issue of if you're on or off because you know you're going to continue to move forward. There's always a path forward. You don't need the wagon.
When you lean into self-trust when you're working towards a change, what ends up happening is you build it when you have your own back throughout this process. You become the person who extends the hand and helps you back up off the ground. And guess what? Releasing this worry or judgment and just the whole idea of the wagon actually leads to quicker, more easeful change. Even better is that these changes become sustainable. Now, it doesn't mean they have to be entirely consistent. It doesn't mean you have to do them every day. It doesn't mean you can't have moments where you don't do them at all. But when you trust yourself to begin again, there's no question of whether or not you will. You just do.
I think that is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself as a designer CEO. I hope that this concept was helpful, and I'd love to hear from you what you thought about it, if you've been implementing it, what type of shift it's maybe caused for you. You can always send me an email or otherwise send me a message on Instagram. I'm @desicreswell.
I'll be back next week with a brand new episode. I want to make sure, too, that you are following the show. I've got some behind-the-scenes on how I'm structuring my summer slowdown this year, along with an announcement for the CEO Summer School series that is coming back in June, and you're going to hear it all on the podcast. All you have to do is go to your podcast app and click that follow button, and then the episode will just appear in your feed, and you won't have to go looking for it.
You can also subscribe to Monday Mindset, which is my weekly newsletter, and that is a great way to be the first one to know when these different opportunities arise. You'll find that at desicreswell.com/monday-mindset. And of course, all of that will be in the show notes as well.
Alright, that is what I have for you. I am wishing you a beautiful week, and I'll talk to you next Wednesday.
Thanks for joining me for this week's episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit DesiCreswell.com, where you’ll get immediate access to a variety of free resources to help you take what you learn on the podcast and put it into action. And if you love what you’re hearing, be sure to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I’ll talk to you next week.
Enjoy the Show?
Don’t miss an episode, follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube Music.
Next
Next