Are You Trying To Plan Your Way To Certainty?

This week, my daughter and I started talking about holidays for next year. Harry Styles and Rome came up. Let’s do it, I said. Decision made. (Surprisingly easy!) On to the plan of how to make it a reality. And it got me thinking.

A little over three years ago, I started planning to leave teaching. Like a dream holiday destination, I'd fantasised about it for years. Leaving Teaching was on my bucket list. I’d thought about it without ever committing to it. So why hadn't I gone sooner? Now I understand what was getting in the way.

I didn't have a clear destination in mind.

When you go on holiday, you don't start by packing a suitcase. You decide where you're going and then you book it. You commit to a specific destination, put a date in the diary and work backwards from there. What you need to pack and how you’re going to get there are determined by the destination you've already chosen. Not the other way round.

Of course, what you pack doesn’t give you control over the weather. The best-laid travel plans don't guarantee a smooth journey. You have no idea how long the queue at airport security will be. You can't control the traffic on the motorway. You might miss a connection or even have to change your route completely. In extreme circumstances, you might arrive and discover you can't stay in the hotel you booked. (It happened to me once, and the alternative was an upgrade beyond my wildest expectations, just saying!)

But none of those uncertainties change the destination. Of all the holidays I’ve ever taken in my life, I’ve never set off for Spain and accidentally ended up spending a fortnight in Bognor.

We book the holiday with 100% certainty about where we are going, but minimal certainty over how we will arrive there or what the experience will be like when we do. Does that uncertainty stop us booking it? Absolutely not. We know where we want to go, so we take steps to make it happen and live in excited anticipation of being there.

Yet when it comes to making bigger decisions about our lives, we can be less proactive. Maybe we don’t know where we want to go. ‘Just anywhere but here, please’ isn't really going to cut it. Or maybe we need to know exactly how it's going to work out before we're prepared to commit to where we're going. Spoiler alert: there is no certainty. Questions naturally come up: How will I earn enough money? What would I do instead? How will I find clients? What if I move and don't know anybody? What if I make the wrong decision? What if it takes longer than I thought? What if people judge me? What if I fail? But these kind of questions don't help us becasue they are impossible to answer.

We end up trying to control the whole journey before we’ve even decided on the destination. And then it all feels too hard and the doubts creep in: Perhaps I should stay where I am. Perhaps it's unrealistic. Perhaps I'm not ready. Perhaps I need to think about it some more. And before you know it, another year has gone by and you are still exactly where you were, just a little bit more tired and jaded and even more uncertain. 

If you want to build the life you dream of, two things really matter.

You need to decide exactly where you want to go. The destination needs to be desirable and compelling enough to keep you on course when travel plans go awry.

(NB: It's not enough to decide you are going ‘anywhere but here’: that will just keep you daydreaming rather than taking inspired action.)

Then, and only then, do you need a plan. And I emphasise the word plan. A plan is not a guarantee. It's just the best route you can see from where you're standing right now. Because once you start moving your feet, you'll get information you don't currently have. You'll meet people you don't currently know. Opportunities will appear that you couldn't possibly have planned for. Some things won't work. Others will work out better than you imagined. The route changes because life happens.

There was no clear route or guaranteed path when I left education after 35 years. But there was a crystal-clear destination. I saw the kind of life I wanted to create, and I held it firmly in my heart and mind. I couldn't possibly have foreseen every twist and turn that has brought me here, but I didn't need to. I needed to know where I wanted to go, commit to moving towards it, make the best decisions I could along the way, and become increasingly comfortable with not knowing exactly what would happen next. And I can honestly say, it's not just the destination that holds the magic and excitement, they exist in all the places along the way.

If you are ready to embrace the life you really want rather than the one you find yourself tolerating, the first question isn't: How am I going to make this happen? It's: Where do I really want to go?

The most important thing I have learned through my own adventures is: the more certainty you need about the journey, the fewer destinations you will allow yourself to visit. Your life will be safer (maybe), but it will also be smaller.

And I acknowledge that safe is more than enough for some people. It wasn't for me. I'm only here once as Paula Smith, and Paula Smith wants to see the world.

Making It Intentional

Ask yourself:

If I stopped worrying about how I would get there, where would I actually choose to go?

Give yourself ten minutes before you get caught up with the busyness of life this week and describe the destination.  Not the route. Not what feels realistic. Not what you think you should want. Aim bigger. 

Write it down. What does your life look like? How does it feel? What are you doing more of? What are you doing less of?

Then finish with one question:

What is one thing I can do this week that moves me in that direction?

Your Next Step

If you are, or someone you know is, a teacher or school leader who knows they don't want to stay where they are but they're struggling to see the destination clearly, I'm running a free workshop this Wednesday: Leaving Teaching: I know I can't do another year but what else could I do? I'd love to see you there.