What to Do When Life Insists on Its Own Plan Instead of Yours?

One reality we would do well to accept is that life insists on its own plan more than it does ours.

A lot more. Although, it does humor us from time to time to make us think we’re in control of things down here.

But what is it about those times? Well, I believe that’s mostly because we’ve learned to adapt at least enough to get by. We don’t notice the bumps as much when things happen to be going our way. 

And it’s best not to fall into the trap of believing we can be in control. We’ll struggle more if we do. And it leads to good ol’ stress and frustration.

What to do when ‘Plan A’ keeps getting preempted.

I’ve been off-kilter recently because my ‘Plan A’ keeps getting preempted. For example, I’ve been trying to write this post for about three days now. Two others got scrapped. And I’m not usually the trash can basketball type.

Last week’s post never happened. I didn’t even sit my butt down in front of my keyboard.

Something I learned some time ago is… if you’re pursuing any kind of online anything that seeks the attention of people at the other end of a keyboard and screen, like, say… writing a blog, all the gurus will tell you that the #1 most important strategy you must adopt is one simple thing…

Practicing the art of CONSISTENCY.

That piece of wisdom is usually the first thing I share with anyone when they ask me about how they might start a blog themselves.

And without beating myself up too much, I think I can say, for the most part, I’ve managed to do reasonably well on the consistency side of things. Then sometimes, I’ll hit a bumpy stretch in the road where life doesn’t agree with my best-laid plans.

I’ve been traveling one of those stretches lately. If you’ve been dropping by LifeUntucked^® for a while, you know I hate excuses and strive to make as few as possible… BUT… and it kills me to say this… I’m falling short on getting the posts written.

I try to press on, then the writing presses on me.

Going back to the simple, universal truth… life follows its own plan. And life simply doesn’t care what we think of it. It doesn’t care about our deadlines. We generally must accept that we have little say in the matter.

The best we can do is go with the flow. Adopt effective strategies. Have a ‘Plan B’. And a ‘Plan C’ isn’t a bad idea either.

For us, ‘Plan B’ involves being forced to move to a new apartment an extra time in less than a year and it’s not even to the house we’re building. That one will be further down the road.

So, once again, the last couple of months have been all things moving… prep, actual moving, moving crapola to storage (nuclear option), cleaning, unpacking, fitting square pegs into round holes, continued mayhem, and more… you get the idea… 

We’ve all been there in one form or another…

Where the world seems like it’s fighting you at every turn. As Bruce Lee said, you’ve got to become like water—

You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.”

― Bruce Lee

Well, all I have to say is that moving water is even harder than herding cats. But that’s not what he means.

He’s talking about how we meet life. To meet life like water is to be flexible, nimble, agile… as we face the circumstances that arise each and every day.

Another useful perspective is to look at life as a series of seasons.

We will all live through many seasons. You know the big ones—childhood, the school years, twenties, thirties, midlife, senior years. I’ve found it useful to go smaller with the seasons.

Late last fall, I realized I was juggling a bunch of extra tasks, and something had to give. Because once again, I wasn’t getting to the important ones.

One step I took was to declare an ‘unsubscribe to everything season.’  The plan was to unsubscribe to absolutely every online subscription that was eating up my time and keeping me from getting a good start to my days. I thought doing this for a month or two would get me where I needed to be.

Small as it sounds, it lifted a weight.

That month or two stretched into six—because it was working for me. I haven’t resubscribed to any of them. And honestly, I don’t miss a single one of them.

Now back to that moving thing. It’s the new season for us. Frustrating? Yes. Exhausting? Damn straight. Fun? Only for fleeting moments.

Oh, do you remember the time when I said that I thought we were finally over the hump? We weren’t. But we journey on! 

I’m hearing the following piece of advice more and more…

Go easy on yourself.”

—people who know how to stress less

You know you’re not slacking off. Okay, okay… maybe you are sometimes, just a little. That’s still okay. You are human and I have only met a few of us who can operate with all dials turned up to eleven for very long.

And it’s okay to just go with the flow. Bruce Lee said so!

Remember, life insists on its own plan.

Be untucked.

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