Put Planning In Its Place

Busy Making Plans“Life is what happens,” the old quote goes, “when you are busy making other plans.” As valuable as planning can be, overdoing it saps all the joy and spontaneity from life.

It’s so easy to feel you are not ready to begin! You want to do more research, talk to a few more people, read a couple more books, or get better organized first. While it’s common to want to feel prepared for what’s ahead, perhaps there’s really something else going on.

Flexibility, adaptability, and resilience are life skills that help us “go with the flow.” The truth? No one can prepare, script, or plan for every possibility. A more loving choice is to relax into all that was, is and will be—trusting that Universal love is always unfolding the highest good for all, in all through all.

What about you? Do you over prepare? Do you worry that you won’t perform adequately if you don’t anticipate every possibility and think through every detail in advance? Iyanla Vanzant describes worrying as praying for what you don’t want. Where’s the sense in that?

Must you handle everything yourself because no one else will do it as well as you do? Do you keep your hands clenched in a white-knuckle grip on the controls of life at all times? Are you unwilling, or unable, to relax and let life blossom organically? 

While a reasonable level of preparation is useful, over-preparation keeps you from enjoying your life to the fullest. Get clear on the debilitating difference between love-fueled excellence and fear-fueled perfectionism. Then take a chance. Embrace the liberating power of trusting God with the details! Show up without knowing exactly how things will go and trust that, not only will everything be okay, it just might exceed your wildest dreams!

Click here to visit the portal for my book, Choose Your Energy: Change Your Life (Balboa Press 2013). Explore options to purchase the book online in softcover, hardcover and three digital formats, order an autographed softcover copy, read book reviews and sign up for my book insider club. 
Click here to visit the portal for my weekly 60-minute Internet radio show on the VoiceAmerica EmPOWERment channel. Access recordings of all past episodes, browse descriptions of upcoming episodes, sign up for my radio insider club, explore guest testimonials and submit a proposal to appear as a guest on my show. 
© Copyright 2013 DJW Life Coach LLC. All rights reserved.

About djwlifecoach

I am retired from 40+ years of helping individuals and teams build lives and organizations they love. One of the great joys of my retirement from professional practice is having greater bandwidth to donate my professional and creative talents to support and promote animal and social welfare charities. During my 30 years as an organization transformation consultant, I served as a senior partner in four of the world’s largest, most prestigious global professional services firms. In 2005, I took a five-year sabbatical to find healing and peace because non-stop work had taken its toll. My recovery from burnout led to finding my purpose guiding others on their journeys. As a board-certified coach, author, consultant, radio host, Reiki Master and EFT/tapping practitioner, I share hope, possibilities and empowerment with the world. 111419 DJW Sid CH Pet Corner Photo ShootI help clients achieve rapid, extraordinary, sustainable results by connecting who they are with what they do, a connection often lost through stress and the sheer busy-ness of daily life. Courageous self-awareness and unconditional self-love lead to honest choices based on priorities that nurture you and those around you on a journey to wholeness. Decades in coaching, consulting, change management, organization development, human resources and mixed media artistic expression honed my business sense, professionalism, creativity, intuition, leadership and communication skills. The result? Practical tools that help you become more insightful, creative, committed, productive and fulfilled. Even the most dedicated and hard-working individuals can shift from frustration to a sense of futility when their values, passion, work, and lives become disconnected. One of the problems with not taking care of our health is that the effects of ignoring it are often slow to show up. We continue to juggle family responsibilities, work and finances until we lose ourselves, waking up one day 50 pounds heavier in body and soul—no good to ourselves or anyone else. I love working with people who are ready to take life-changing action to make their dreams a reality. At each moment, you have inside you all the wisdom you seek to choose your life and your way of showing up. Limiting thoughts, beliefs and feelings can block you from moving forward. An absence of love and concern for yourself can result in negative head talk that holds you back with discouraging messages about who you are and what you can do. By listening and caring deeply, I guide you in connecting with your own inner wisdom. We identify the way you’d like to live. We determine what’s blocking you and release you from the hold those blocks have over you—unleashing the positive energy that will fuel you forward. Together we develop a plan to move you closer to your heart’s desire. My books, blog, radio show and signature coaching programs help individuals and organizations harness the transformative energy of love to turn unexplored possibilities into fulfilling realities and step into their greatness. What’s love got to do with it? Everything! My book, Choose Your Energy: Change Your Life! (Hay House/ Balboa Press 2013) shares my story and the stories of 10 of my clients along with my signature Discovery Framework. For fun, I love reading, sewing, knitting, yin yoga, afternoon tea, opera and movies. I live in Williamsburg, Virginia with my spouse, Wilson Abney, and the cat who runs our life, Maisy Jane.
This entry was posted in All My Blog Posts, Faith, Hope & Spirituality, Force, Flow & Baby Steps, Stress, Perfectionism & Burnout and tagged , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

1 Response to Put Planning In Its Place

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.