It might be a little early in the year to use a football metaphor, but I used this phrase a few days ago and I think it’s worth sharing. Let me explain.
Like most people, I have a number of goals that I’m working towards at any given time, personally and professionally. For example, I’m usually working on making better food choices to improve my health. I will often remove something completely from my diet for a month or two to give myself a definitive line of what I will and won’t eat.
Having set “rules” makes it easier to make decisions about what I should choose for dinner. These guides help, but I’ve learned that you can’t be too rigid. There are too many possible scenarios and the variables keep changing. To take the audible example, most football teams start with scripted plays. But when the quarterback gets to the line of scrimmage, he might observe something that will affect the pre-arranged strategy. And so he makes an adjustment.
It’s the same in life. You can plan all you want, you can have as many hard and fast rules as you want, but you always have to be open to calling an audible and changing your approach. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to know when and where to do that, but that doesn’t make it less true. So when I broke my “no ice cream” rule and someone pointed it out, I told them I was calling an audible. Because some warm, beautiful July nights are made for ice cream. And yes, it was totally worth it.
