Plans are great for accomplishing your goals, keeping you on track and making sure you don’t forget an important step in the process. Sometimes, however, life has other ideas and throws you a curve ball and it’s up to you to be flexible, to ‘pivot’ and take a different path from the one you had in mind.
For those of us with perfectionist tendencies, this can be very stressful, because we had this perfect plan and suddenly we can’t execute it. Frustrating!
So how can you build the necessary flexibility into your plans so you can work towards your goals and deal with – maybe even enjoy – little detours along the way?
I’ve recently had to face this myself and today I want to share what I learned.
Did you notice the time?
You may have noticed that this newsletter has arrived much later than the usual 6.15am GMT on Mondays. And last week there wasn’t one at all.
Two weeks ago my mum got critically ill and I had to make my way to Germany in a hurry. Everything else had to wait or be delegated. Add to this that we moved house yesterday and I’m sure you’ll understand the delay. Mum is fine, by the way, she’s recovering well.
The lesson I didn’t have to learn was that family comes first – it always does. But I had to deal with a few things at the same time, such as:
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fearing for mum’s life and feeling absolutely beside myself with worry;
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organising my tickets to Germany and back and packing my stuff;
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organising for someone to look after Maggie, as Andy had left for New York the day I received the news;
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keep in touch with the rest of my family to make sure they were doing ok;
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communicate with Andy who immediately changed his plans and came back the next day;
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organise a vet appointment for Maggie so she could get a travel certificate for Europe;
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check various travel rules to make sure we wouldn’t get stuck at any point in our journey because we had the house move coming up;
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coordinate with my manager so he could take over two key presentations for me (I was in no state to handle them);
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reschedule a dozen meetings;
As someone who is very organised, all this stuff was exhausting but step by step it was done and I experienced the mind blowing kindness of the wonderful people in my family, my circle of friends, and the colleagues I work with.
Surround yourself with people who can count on you and whom you can count on – especially in the moments when it matters the most.
Build in a buffer
You’ll probably remember situations when you made a plan that seemed ambitious and you knew things had to work out perfectly or it would all come undone.
Whether it’s a very tight connection between trains on your way to an important meeting, or having just enough money left at the end of the month to pay a bill – great if it works out but stressful while you’re experiencing it.
I’ve become good at building a buffer into my monthly finances and I’m doing alright with the commitments that depend solely on me. One thing I am still learning is how to build the right amount of ‘slack’ into my plans when those plans include dependencies on other people and processes.
When you create your next project plan or road trip itinerary – give yourself a bit of extra time. At work this could leave room for a mentoring chat with a new team member. On the road it could mean stopping by the lake for an afternoon to swim and sunbathe.
Say yes when people offer you help
I’m good at helping, not so good at asking for help, and even worse at accepting help that’s offered to me. One thing I learned over the last two weeks is how nice it feels when someone offers help, you accept it and then – this is important! – you truly enjoy receiving the help.
From family and friends making the time to chat and asking about mum but also how we were doing, to people being super responsive whenever we needed something, to people moving mountains to make stuff happen for us. It felt like a massive hug from a whole village and I really appreciated it.
So the two parts to this lesson are:
Say yes when someone offers help, even if you don’t think you need it, because you could do it alone
AND give yourself permission to enjoy their help. While they do, either focus on something else that needs your attention or simply take a breath and relax a little.
Yes, I could have done without fearing for mum’s life. January could have been just simple and it still would have been busy enough. But the reality is that things outside of our control will happen over and over again and we have to roll with it as best we can.
I certainly learned to focus on the things I could control, and try to let go of stuff I have no influence over. I also learned to trust the very capable people who not just saved mum’s life but also took amazing care during her recovery.
And the house move? Still worked out okay and on schedule. My work presentations were done brilliantly by my manager and I caught up with ‘open items’ over the rest of last week.
My wish for you. especially if you’re a perfectionist like me, is that you can give yourself a bit more room to breathe, to let go and to take disruptions and detours in your stride. Some will be nothing but stressful, but even those can contain a bit of beauty.
Have a great week!
Eva