Monday Musing: Make a Plan

I recently met an artist through a mutual friend. The artist said she wished that her art would create enough income to support her. She was attending workshops to hone her skills, marketing her art in her area, and producing her art in every free moment. She was also living with her parents.

I asked where she wanted her artistic business to be in a year. She had no idea. I told her that's why her art was not creating enough income to support her.

(By the way, she took it rather well, considering we'd just been introduced in a gluten free bakery, and not in an actual life coaching session.)

The artist inside all of us doesn't want to make a plan. Our inner artist thinks that when we make a plan we limit our possibilities. What if we make a plan and miss out on something better? At first, the choice to have no plan seems to allow space for creativity.

These reasons for not having a plan all have the same root: fear. We don't trust ourselves to make the "right" plan. We tell ourselves that we are waiting for just the right opportunity. We also protect ourselves from the possibility of failure if our plan does not work by simply not having a plan.

There's really no reason (other than fear) to not make a plan. In the words of the great American philosopher, Dr. Seuss, "You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose."

Here's what I could have said to the artist at the gluten-free bakery: Make a plan. You are creative enough to make an appropriate plan. You are creative enough to be creative within your plan. You are also creative enough to integrate a new opportunity into the plan if it comes along before you reach your destination. Finally, you are creative enough to learn from your mistakes if your plan is not successful.

Choose a direction and go. Just don't live in your parents' basement any longer than you'd like. 

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