Your priorities and goals may shift throughout your time in school. At times, unexpected events and challenges can get in the way of best-laid plans. For example, you might get sick or injured or need to deal with a family issue or a financial crisis, which might cause you to have to take time away from school. Or perhaps you may realize that you need to change your major, which would require a reevaluation of your goals and possibly spending more time in school. We can’t predict the future, and while goal setting is an important part of life, we also need to understand when we should reevaluate.

When Your Goals Get Sidetracked

Goals can become sidetracked. Other events in your life might distract you from achieving your immediate goals, even if they are goals that are really important to you and that you’ve worked hard to achieve. Consider the following scenario in which a student is challenged to reexamine her goals, priorities, and timetables:

Janine had thought she would be an accountant, even though she knew little about what an accounting job might entail. Her math and organizational skills were strong, and she enjoyed taking economics courses as well as other courses in her accounting program. But when one of her courses required her to spend time in an accounting office working with taxes, she decided that accounting was not the right fit for her due to the higher-stress environment and the late hours.

At first she was concerned that she invested time and money in a career path that did not match her disposition. She feared that changing her major would add to her graduation time. Nevertheless, she did decide to change her major and her career focus.

Janine is now a statistician with a regional healthcare system. She is very happy with her work. Changing her major from accounting to statistics was the right decision for her.

Janine could have stuck with her original goal to become an accountant, despite realizing that the job wasn’t a good fit for her. Instead, she didn’t allow the fear of changing her major or adding additional time in school prevent her from changing course once she knew being an accountant wasn’t right for her. Let’s take a closer look at how Janine may have worked through reprioritizing her goals and timeline.

This scenario represents some of the many opportunities we have on an ongoing basis to assess our relationship to our goals, reevaluate priorities, and adjust. These opportunities exist every day—every moment, really! Remember, you can’t predict the outcome of every choice that you make, but if you take the time to really evaluate the options that are available to you instead of continuing on a path that isn’t working, or giving up all together, you never know what options and opportunities may come your way.

Problem-Solving Strategies

When you’re facing an unexpected event that forces you to change your approach or your goals, there are some helpful questions to consider. Below is a simple list of five problem-solving strategies. They can be applied to any aspect of your life.

1. Define the Problem

What is the problem? Define it in detail. How is it affecting you and other people? What is the cause of the problem? Why is this relevant to your life and the people in your life?

2. How Are Other People Dealing with This Problem?

Are there other people who have dealt with this same issue or issues like it? How are other people dealing with this problem? You might find information about this issue either from the people you know in real life or from articles on the Internet, podcasts, books, or other media. Ask yourself,

• are others making changes to their own behavior, such as adjusting their time management skills?
• can they still complete their responsibilities on time?
• are they accessing outside support and strategies to help them navigate this situation?

3. What Solutions Are Available to Me?

After examining how other people have dealt with this issue, you might want to come up with some of your own solutions (whether or not you incorporate aspects of other peoples’ approaches). It can help to make a list of possible solutions with pros and cons (the benefits of each choice and the drawback of each choice). Write down every solution you can think of; no option is too strange or impossible at this stage. You just want to get all your ideas down on paper so you can evaluate them later. Ask yourself,

• what is my range of possible solutions?
• how might these solutions help me reach my goal/s?

4. What Needs to Be Done?

This is the part where you evaluate whether or not your solutions are realistic. Ask yourself,

• what do I need to do to implement each possible solution?
• is it possible to do those things?
• what would it cost me, in money, time, effort, and other ways?

Make sure to think about how each solution might affect the other areas in your life, and what the pros and cons are for your current and future self.

5. Talk It Through with Someone You Trust

Once you have a list of possible solutions, you will probably know deep down which solution you’re most interested in pursuing first. If it helps, talk it through with a trusted friend (this could be a peer, a parent, or anybody in your life that you trust with making decisions). You might be surprised what perspective they bring to the situation that you hadn’t considered.

Change is Normal

No matter who you are, unexpected things are bound to happen that will disrupt your plans. Remembering this fact might help you feel more at ease when your plans get disrupted. Reevaluating and changing course is a normal part of life. Feel confident that you can return to your intended path in time, and remember that there can be learning opportunities even in the unexpected. Take some time to acknowledge the ways in which you need to regroup. If it helps, seek advice from people who have faced adversity. Line up your resources, be resolved, and proceed with certainty toward your goals.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

–Henry David Thoreau, author