Is Your Brain Treating a Plan Like a Promise?

Maybe you put dinner on the calendar, planned the route for your next trip, booked a room for a party, or made a grocery list to take to the store. A plan can help us make decisions ahead of time and that’s a good thing. Sometimes, our brain hijacks what we intend to do and turns it into this is what is going to happen. That doesn’t feel good because as we try to make whatever it is happen, we learn we don’t have much control.

Jon Acuff writes in Procrastination Proof, “You can’t out plan the ocean.”

You can check the weather, pack the right clothes, charge your phone and bring snacks, maybe even healthy ones. 😉 Then the weather does what weather does. Rain, wind, and lightning did not put you in charge. It’s true for traffic, cars, families, schedules, dogs, bodies…I’m pretty close to writing everything, but I don’t want you to think I’m being dramatic.

We make plans. Things change.

We learn several times a day that a plan isn’t a contract with the universe. Life still asks for, okay maybe demands, flexibility when it comes to plans. We have to hold them with open hands and we take the next step from the current reality, not the version of our day we expected when we made our plan.

It’s a small moment of agency.

This week, when something doesn’t go according to plan, notice whether your brain treats it like a contract.

Then remind yourself:

The plan helped me begin. I can adjust as needed.

Email me: paigekullmancoaching@gmail.com and let me know one plan you’ll be holding a little more loosely.

I’ll be cheering you on,

 

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