How to plan for the future

How to plan for the future?

Do something in the present.

photo credit: WorldIslandInfo.com

Plans are so worthless, really. We depend on our plans. We think: this is a good plan. Everything in my life will be okay, now, because I have this good plan.

Since when has life submitted, meekly, head down, with an inside-voice, to our plans?

Hasn’t happened much for me.

What builds the future isn’t so much your plans for it but your actions in the present. Those tiny little recurring actions, the ones that seem unimportant, the ones that seem too small to count. Those count.

We need to start seeing how much of the power to build a good life resides with us. It’s not about chance or luck or even blessing, in the extreme majority of cases. It’s just about what you do or don’t do.

I believe in God, and I believe that God can bless: but God can bless what you do only if you do it. How can He bless inaction? There’s nothing to bless. How can He rain down showers of blessing on hesitation, indecision, procrastination? It’s nonevents, a whole series of them. There’s nothing TO bless in those, just a lot of NOTHING.

Maybe you don’t believe in God, okay. Same concept though. Sure, there are exceptions, lottery winners, random strokes of fate that change your life as you know it, in an instant.

But mostly, there is just today, and what you do in it. And the actions you put into today add up and create what you end up with tomorrow, next week, next year.

Success in what matters most to us – whatever that is for you – those things that matter to us are built or not built according to what we do or don’t do. According to whether we take action or hesitate, procrastinate, lose.

Part of why we don’t take action is the myth of the plan. We still hang on the idea of that Perfect Plan, and we want to have it all figured out before we start to act on it. We want to know it fits, we want to study every side, we want to do the research, we want to take the quizzes, we want to analyze and test and think and yes, sometimes that’s good.

But sometimes (most of the time) you figure out the plan by doing it.