PART 1: THE PLAN
Never be afraid to dream big dreams. They have a way of coming true.
--Something my parents always told me
Buckminster Fuller is once said to have written that even the mightiest ship benefits greatly from a small rudder. It doesn't take a lot to affect great changes in your life. There is always a way to solve even the most overwhelming problem.
There are no quick answers to the problems of life. But, like a single raindrop that tears a particle of rock from a gigantic mountain, you've got to start in the right place. It doesn't matter how hard you work, if you're not moving in the right direction. Sure, you'll always go someplace, but "someplace" may not be any place you want to be.
Let’s consider two extremes. One guy jumps in to build a winter shelter, using instructions as a guide along the way. The other spends most of his time reading the instructions and not enough time building.
In many ways planning is a way of finding a balance between what is desirable, and what is inevitable. The first guy might be considered by some as "lucky," because he didn't get halfway through his house and find he was missing a part or a key instruction. Yes, it is important to know that the instructions you plan to use are accurate (another reason you should write them yourself). Still, there is something to be said for doing while planning.
You should never put your life on hold while you figure out what to do. Most of us can't! Sometimes the most beneficial long-range ideas come while trying to solve an immediate problem. And when you think about it, life is really an "on-the-job" training program.
Business and government have developed elaborate, often incomprehensible processes for establishing strategic plans, city plans, master plans, short range plans, long range plans--even plans for developing plans. And from these processes come trite "systems" for decision-making that promise fast results if you follow a few simple steps.
True competence in planning, like any endeavor, however, does not come so easily. There are no simple formulas. No one can tell you what your plan should be. You can't use someone else's plan to reach your goals. Rather, your plans--like your motivation--must come from within. After all, who knows you better than you?
Fear of failure can cripple your motivation. The blunders and mishaps of life can be great teachers, if we will but heed their lessons.
Believe in yourself, even when others aren't convinced. Any salmon will tell you that success usually comes only by swimming upstream. Columbus acted against the advice of most around him, but he succeeded primarily because he knew he was right. He knew he could.
Careful planning won't solve all problems, and a plan should never become an end in itself. There are those who spend their lives perfecting their planning skills (even writing about them!) just to find out that planning is just one of many tools used to build those things that are really important.
Remember the amusement park you visited last summer? Do you remember how you stood in line for hours at each attraction, weaving your way through steel posts and chains, and listening to your children express their youthful impatience through such phrases as "I can't stand here anymore" or "how much longer?" If so, then you probably remember what it was that kept you shuffling toward the front of the line. It wasn't the joy of waiting, it was the anticipation of what lay at the other end. It was the knowledge that the reward for your patience was the excitement you wanted when you walked into the line in the first place.
Keeping your goals in mind is the one way to maintain the motivation necessary to truly accomplish them. In this way, effective goals--those that excite us and keep us interested in following the plans we've set to attain them--are self-fulfilling.
You've got to think about the big things while doing the small things, so that the small things go in the right direction.
--Alvin Toffler
If plans are to be truly useful as guides, they must reflect the kinds of values and goals you feel are important. The road you choose need not necessarily be your own, but it must be one of your own choosing. Sam Walter Foss (in The Calf Path) illustrates beautifully this point:
One day through the primeval wood
A calf walked home, as good calves should;
But left a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail, as all calves do...
And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf...
A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way,
And lost one hundred years a day;
For thus such reverence is lent
To well established precedent.
Walter Lord, author of the classic account of the Titanic disaster, A Night to Remember, offers another glimpse of the tragedy of precedent as he recites the questioning of Capt. Maurice Henry Clarke, the Board of Trade inspector who cleared Titanic for sailing and approved an (obviously) inadequate lifeboat drill. The dialogue went something like this:
"Then you do not think your system before the Titanic disaster was very satisfactory?"
"No, sir."
"Then why did you do it?"
"Because it was the custom."
"Do you follow a custom because it is bad?"
"Well, I am a civil servant, sir, and custom guides us a good bit."
To really fulfill our potential in life, it's important to look beyond the inevitable and decide what we can do with the discretionary. If you think of life as a wagon--one of the canvas-covered, wooden types that our pioneer ancestors drove across America--you'd see that all of our wagons are a little different. Even though they're made for similar purposes, our wagons come in different sizes and shapes, depending on the specific tasks for which they may be used. Given this parallel, it is unlikely that the wheel from one wagon would necessarily fit another.
Like wagons, planning is a personalized process that must be adapted to meet the diversity of our objectives; and planning is (or should be), by definition, innovative. Therefore, it's important to try to improve the obvious. It may, in fact, be appropriate to create an entirely new method of mobility for your particular "wagon," one that will better meet your needs. Maybe your "wagon" doesn't have to have wheels at all. Maybe it could float or even fly. But if you start with the same approach as everyone else, you'll likely never know.
You may someday be asked to explain or defend your plan for life. You may be asked to describe in words, things that cannot be easily verbalized. Good or bad, the feelings you harbor within often cannot be shared. They are yours alone. You should cherish them. They will always color your perception of life and, ultimately, become part of who you are.
Never, never be afraid to dream your own big dreams...
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