Why I made all these grand plans and why that is a surefire way to fail them
Why I made all these grand plans and why that is a surefire way to fail them
I tended to be that person that had grand plans when I started building a business. I thought, hell yeah, I will build that huge thing, I will make that company successful, I will do it all. And then I would talk about it, about my goals, my objectives, my plans with everyone that was around me.
Did it work? Did I achieve any of these plans? No, I did not. At least not those that I was bragging about and talking about the most. Why? Because all of those plans lacked something essentially important: they were plans made in the intricacies of my mind, very well thought out, very conceptual, they had everything, they had a branding, they had a concept, they had the marketing copy, they had the pricing, they had the financial modelling, they had a website, they had a 3 months — 6 months — 12 months — 5 year plan, they were perfect. And some of them were even validated with clients. But something was off.
Why would they fail?
Why would these perfectly laid out plans fail? Why would they not lead to anywere despite a grand finale in my head? For exactly that simple reason. They were plans, made up in my head, but not related to me as a person. They had nothing to do with me. They were brain jumbles. Clever and quite well-thought out ones, don’t give me wrong, but they were not related to reality. They had no foundation in reality. In the moments of life that determine whether they are able to reach reality.
Because what determines reality?
Reality is the here and now. It is that what happens now. And now happens through our daily actions and decisions. When I make these grand plans and don’t have the bandwidth to bring them to life, then they stay what they are — grand plans. They will never see reality. What I did was to sit down and make that perfectly feasible plan: you wake up each morning and then you will work on that plan. And then you do a, b, c, to achieve that. And what would happen. I would be getting overwhelmed about a structure and routine that my mind planned to impose upon me to make his grand plans a reality. And sooner or later I was burned out, I was lost in the grand plans and actions it had seen me perform to make it a reality. Again, it was not laid in reality.
Soon I would feel burned out, stressed and unable to do anything. And what felt like an amazing, big idea, would fail with me being devastated: “Oh, no, again did I fail! Again was I not able to achieve my grand plans! It just cannot be that again I fail!”, would I carve me down. Soon after I would have done that I would stand up, elongate my jacket, push my arms in the air and tell myself “you can do that! Others can do so too! Don’t be so depressed, we make that work!” and then I would get all that energy back and work on the next big grand plan. Soon after, a new concept would emerge and I would intensily work on the concept. And you can probably imagine by now what happened next: yes, indeed, the circle would repeat. Over and over again would it have the same cadence. Developing a grand plan, having the concept perfectly laid out, the marketing copy, everything ready to get launched, but then the daily doing would fail the grand plan and soon depression and stress would kick in. And the circle would start again.
How can you break that circle of grand plans and depression afterwards
Breaking it is similar to any kind of change that you undertake. It is about becoming aware of what is going on. When I went through my cycles, it become evident that something was inherently moving in a wrong direction. I would get overly excited in front of friends and people, would get all over the moon for the excitement of what I have “built” (which often was a rather early-stage-idea-concept) and then would go back to work, to telling them another grand idea I had come up with, ignoring what I did work on beforehand. And in between, I would withdraw, not talk to anyone and feel like “a failure, who again failed at achieving her grand plans”. Believe me, that stressed out many friends, made some of them believe I needed therapy (which may have not been completely wrong at some points in that journey ;)) and made me being more lonely than I had been before.
It took me a while to realize the pattern I was repeating and why that was clearly something that does not lead anywhere. The awareness so became my first part of realizing that there needs to be change. The moment I realized that something was off, I took the time to deliberately change what I was doing. No planning I told myself. You are just not planning right now. And then let’s see what happens.
So, what happened?
The first thing that happened was that it backfired. Instead of “not planning” I did an over-planning, instead of “not-planning”, I did everything else that wasn’t planning but was part of the planning process. It felt like a drug that I had given myself and my brain to keep it busy and occupied and it now was looking for something else that would keep him busy. I immersed in news about the war in Gaza for a week and got obsessed about everything there was about it, I immersed in neurodivergent traits in people and the symptoms and behaviors neurodivergent people show, and so on. My mind tried to find other ways to keep it occupied. And to some extend I like that immersion, but spending hours and days at topics that have no way to bring me to a place I like to be, is not healthy neither.
But it reminded me of an important lesson, the importance of our brains and what is going in within ourselves that make us take specific actions. I realized that my brain was running the show. And there are two “train of thoughts” how I like to call them, the one that I refer to here and the other one that helps me writing the lines of text I am currently writing for that article. The former one, what kind of “train of thought” is it? It is the train of thought that wants to make sense of the world, that needs certainty, it needs satisfaction, it needs action, it needs and needs and needs, and wants more and more, it craves satisfaction, easily attainable, easily consumed. It loves it. It loves the idea of staying in its mind and imaging the grand plans, as it helps to not having to do things that may be uncomfortable. The grand plans allow him to stay in the imaginery, in the safe space of the mind. And at the same time, it loves the instant gratification. So when the nice, cosy, imaginary world disappeared, it tried to find another satisfaction — the consumption of news, of information. When it consumes, it does not need to take extra energy, it can float, it can immerse, it is satisfied.
But this comes at a very hig cost
But there is an innate and deep cost to this form of letting the former part of “train of thought” decide over what we do and where we put our energy to. It derails from reality, it derails from taking in the actions that lead to outcomes and to the eventual achievement of those grand plans. It misses reality. It makes all these grand plans but fails to see that they have no way to end up where they should be — in the leave it, love it or change it category. But there they never end up. They are either there, perfect in their outline, but afflicted to failure. And life passes by while our brains are still busy making plans.
How do you free yourself from your brain making the decisions for you?
Well, that is a question, that already filled many bookshelfs. It is the intricate question of how do we find back to ourselves determining and deciding what we do. How do we find a way to reclaim what is within us and let that be guiding our own decisions. I used various practices that helped me make that shipft, but the most profound one was to losen myself from it, to accept that I am not my thoughts, that I am a person that can make her own decisions. It was like losen myself from not only those thoughts, but anything that was going there. It was the fact that I realized that I can do what I want to do and that those thoughts are merely thoughts. they come and go. the importance is to stay in the here and now and slowly building up what you want to achieve. And then the brain, when it realizes that it has no power and decision power, it becomes calm and relaxed.
This sounds much easier than it is done. And the problem with it is that when you achieve that state, you know that you achieved it, but there is no clear guideline of how you can achieve it. It is a personal journey of discovery and growth that leads to the moment, where things fall in place and let you be free from what the mind wants to achieve in its way — like the security of the imaginary, the safety of the grand plans, the comfort of the immersion in the news.
Even though I won’t be able to help you with a clear practice to achieve that state (and I may also fall out of it in the future again, there is never any guarantee), I still want to give you some ideas of what helped me to come to that state. So let us begin.
Become aware of your daily choices
Grand plans often happen when we have no foundation within ourselves. And one note here — you can have grand plans, I also have some, but they are founded within reality and I work on them daily to make them a reality. That is something else. I talk about those grand plans that are well laid out, but not founded in reality and not founde within yourself. So when you catch yourself planning, thinking, planning again, making grand plans for your daily doings that are not feasible and not related to reality: STOP!
The moment you realize it, sit back. Breathe. Realize that you were in your thoughts. In your grand plans. Involved in something that had nothing to do with your daily doing. Then realize it. And go back to work on what you do in your day to day. You will soon see patterns emerging: when do you tend to do that the most? When does your mind becomes most conflicted to run to a great moment of satisfaction, leaving you standing in the rain of loss of focus. These are the moments you should care about. The more you become aware of them, the more you can practice new habits. Like having a sticker that reminds you of your brains tendency to go hammock.
Plan times to focus on your daily activities
Another technique that helped me and still does help me is to have my day roughly laid out. I do no not have specific times I would set for myself, but I would set out what I do on a daily basis. And I would re-plan that every single day. This helps me to see what is feasible and also helps me to see what after a day I did. For example jus recently I realized that I am pretty good with filling my day with only those things that matter for me, but then at night, I would have my iPad at my bed and was lookng at it, and my brain would have a lot of chances to come up with plans, to connect the dots of the day, to think about the next amazing step I could take, all great ideas, for sure, but they would bring me back in that imaginary state and I would soon lose track of what I was working on in that moment. And don’t get me wrong, I am a strong believer in imagination, images, sentiments, seeing what is coming up within oneself. But at the same time, if you let your mind allow itself to wander in any direction and you follow in a way that you let the main decide how you feel, how you act and what you do, then you have a problem. What I did instead is that I cut off the iPad from my bed, switch off the light and simply listening carefully of what my body and brain would like to tell me. I would listen to “what is coming up here, what is bothering me, what are the thoughts that tend to come back” and then acknowledge them, and go to sleep. So I allow them in, I give them room, but I do not let them occupy me and drive me in whatever direction they want to go next. This is a liberating and freeing practice and in that way you do cut them off, brush them off, but you integrate them into your very being.
Have a place where you write down all your many grand plans
A third practice I do is to have a place (I currently use Notion), where I have all those grand ideas and plans, my mind comes up with, written down. You can choose whatever you want to choose as a platform, if that sounds like something you want to try out. And then whenever your brain comes up with a grand plan, an idea, a concept, instead of following it without questioning, you can simply write it all in your note-taking app and focus on your day-to-day again. In that way you are not pre-occupied with it, your brain is not coming back to it all the time. Instead you know, it is there for you to get out to of the dust whenever the time is ripe, but it can also simmer in the back for you to be aware that it is not lost in the weed.
Here we go, these are some practices that helped me to ground myself in the present and work towards my goals that are layed down in reality and within myself compared to following grand concepts and ideas and goals, that would soon fall apart by coming close to reality and daily life. If you find yourself in a similar cycle, with practice, persistence and a bit of relaxedness, you will find yourself breaking out of it eventually. Just don’t give up. Cycles are there to be repeated, that’s what they love. But at some point, you will feel the urge to jump out of it, and if that time has come, take a leap and just jump. It will be worth it.
If that article resonated with you, I would be happy to hear from you. Tell me your story, tell me what resonated most with you and tell me what works best for you to losen yourself from grand plans and follow the real deal, the real you :)