“Plans are useful, but don’t get attached to them; life has too many surprises. Preparation, on the other hand, has value, even if the future you planned never comes.”
-Mama Chia, Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior, Dan Millman.
There is a very important distinction being made here in this quote from Mama Chia, a character from Dan Millman’s book, Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior. So many of us are planners. We are constantly told and reinforced by so many pillars of society that making a plan is the right and intelligent thing to do. Make an educational degree plan. Make a financial plan. Make a budgeting plan. Make a healthcare plan. Make a life insurance plan. Make a career plan. Make a plan for your children’s higher education. Make a retirement plan. No matter what you do in life, there is somebody marketing you a plan for it and an industry behind it profiting off of you investing in that marketed plan. We are inundated and constantly reinforced to “have a plan”.
If you have a plan for all of these things in life that we are told to have a plan for, then there is some illusory comfort and peace of mind. Those with the laid out plans, feel more at peace and comforted by their plans. And why wouldn’t they? One less thing you have to think about right!?! It’s like an auto-pilot mechanism for your survival and ability to sustain security for your life’s many trajectories of existence. Making a plan for any facet of life would be one of the most intelligent things you could do with all the given information we have about “playing the long game”. But what happens when the plan falls apart or external circumstances destroy any possibility of a plan succeeding?? What then?
Most people descend into a negative and highly unproductive mindset when a plan falls apart. They become their own worst enemy making a situation worse than just the plan failing. The plan failing isn’t the root of the problem because plans fail all the time. A plan has no intrinsic value on its own. Plans are neutral. We are the ones that assign judgement, value, and most importantly expectations to the plan.
Expectations are the main reason a failed plan has the power to dissolve the fortitude and resiliency of the mind in the wake of the failure. Most of us make the mistake more often than not of placing expectations on any plan we make. Expectations are the emotional attachment we invest in a plan in order to create the illusory effect of the desired outcome being successful before we have truly achieved the success we seek. So if plans have no power of their own and it is our emotional attachment, a.k.a. expectations, that give a plan the power to produce a negative mindset when they fail, what would be a more empowering and sustainable approach to making plans!?!
Preparation. Just like Mama Chia said, “preparation has value, even if the future you planned never comes.”
-The job you hold gets slow in the winter every year and your income is dependent upon the volume per day, so you prepare all year for the winter months both financially and with your resources. Every month you put money into savings which causes you and your family to live on a tighter budget throughout the year. The winter ends up being very mild and volume stays high. Now you have a surplus of savings and resources.
-You invest a great deal of your time and energy preparing for a high profile job interview. You even get a haircut, buy some expensive new clothes, and get them pressed. You don’t end up getting the job. You are that much more prepared and seasoned for the next job interview.
-You prepare for years for a possible coming war. You train your body, mind, and spirit every day for years so when the war breaks out you are ready. You take countless hours of classroom training on tactics and strategy. You run unknown numbers of test operations to prepare you for anything you might encounter in an urban war. You are as ready as it gets for the war. The war never comes. Now you have an amazing daily discipline of training your mind, body, and spirit. You are knowledgeable and prepared for anything that comes at you in life. Because of your years of preparation for war, you have laid the groundwork and foundation to be successful at anything you commit yourself too going forward.
-You spend your whole career investing and saving money in order to prepare for retirement. You’ve prepared by educating yourself on intelligent long term investing and how to double your short term investments with options trading. You lose your 401K 2 years before you planned to retire because the economy crashed due to a housing crisis and your company withholds all 401K’s in order to stay afloat. Despite having lost the 401K, you have all your outside investments and savings and three decades of options trading knowledge. You are prepared to counter the loss of the 401K.
The beauty and notable distinction of preparation in contrast with planning is that preparation gives you tools and skills that transcend the limitations of the plan. By preparing for the plan, you are empowering yourself to be able to adapt and thrive regardless if the plan fails or succeeds. If your success depends upon the outcome of the plan, then you haven’t done enough preparation on the front end of the plan. In life, there are too many unforeseen circumstances that you can’t always account for nor predict which have every ability to destroy a well thought out plan. But if you prepare accordingly for all the skills and cognitive/physical demands surrounding a plan, you will then possess everything you need to adapt and succeed no matter what external circumstances come your way. Not only will you succeed despite the outcome of the plan, but you’ll set yourself up for future success with the newly absorbed skills and knowledge.
The point is that preparation is about continually building and creating a version of yourself that can weather any storm and maintain a resiliency in the face of the fiercest kind of adversity. If you rely solely on the details and fine points of a well thought out plan, you’ll miss the opportunity to prepare yourself for much greater success and scope of potential as you navigate the turbulent seas of life. Would you charter a boat with the skipper who only has a very well charted course, or the skipper who has charted a proper good course, but has also invested years in preparing him or herself for anything that could happen on open waters? I believe the answer goes without saying.
So what can you do today that will prepare you for anything that may come tomorrow?
“To really help people, you first need to understand them – but first understand yourself, prepare yourself; develop the clarity, the courage, and the sensitivity to exert the right leverage, in the right place, at the right time. Then your actions will have power.”
-Socrates, Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior, Dan Millman.
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