The Only Plan We’ll Need To Live Our Best Lives.

Plans. We all need them. We rely on them to manage our lives and without them life would be almost impossible. But although having plans are completely necessary for helping us to maintain relationships, travel, pay bills and keep on top of life, they don’t always help us to follow our dreams and live the lives we really want to live. In fact, sometimes they have the opposite effect and they keep us stuck.

I worked in a corporate office job for nearly 10 years and for most of that time I wished I didn’t.  It felt soul destroying to be there five days a week. I felt like all I needed was a plan to get out and then I’d be happy, so I set about creating that plan to transition from sad and bored into my daydream life. I researched extensively and read 100+ articles on ‘how to leave your day job’ and ‘how to become an entrepreneur’ and many gave step by step plans on how to do it.

Those articles told me I needed to consider my strengths and unique skills. They told me to think about my niche. They suggested I set a date when I would leave by and talk to my family about it too. They told me I needed three months worth of savings. So I got to work and got myself a shiny notebook and pen to plan my new life with. I started with such a sense of optimism, but that soon faded when I realised that despite following the steps, I still didn’t feel ready to leave. I went on like that for around five years, until one day something clicked. I’m not sure why, but in that moment I saw everything clearly.

I didn’t feel ready because I wasn’t really feeling anything at all. I was planning, strategically plotting and getting stuck in my head. It didn’t feel good.

We all want to feel good. Humans want to feel happy. The reason I wanted to change my life in the first place was so I could feel happier. So I decided to try a different tactic. I started to make my primary objective feeling good every day. I learned to meditate and did it every morning. I ate amazing food that I love. I got lots of sleep. I wrote pages and pages in my diary of a life that made me feel amazing, as if I was already living it.

I started to feel different. I saw signs and realised things that I’d never realised before. I trusted myself more and I was more open to new opportunities. If something felt good, I went with it. Those signs and feelings led me to trusting my heart when it nudged me to spend more than I’d ever spent on anything on training to become a life coach. I did it because of my primary focus to feel good. I felt good whilst looking at the training providers website. I felt good when I reached out to them and got the warmest and most human response from a company I’d had in a long time. Each step along the journey I chose the option that felt the best.

When I came to hand my notice in at my corporate day job 18 months later, I wrote in my diary that I was leaving and that it felt different than I’d expected. I had expected to have more of a plan. A 10 step process. But I didn’t have anything like that. All I had was an unshakable trust in myself and the only plan I had was to keep following what made me feel good. To be led by my heart and trust where it takes me. I realised in that moment, that trusting and following my heart is the greatest plan I could ever have and the only one I’d ever need.

It might sound too good to be true, but think about it, if our only plan is to follow our hearts and what feels good, then that is a plan we can have for life. We won’t ever have to go back to the drawing board. It’s impossible for the plan to ‘fail’ and it’s clear and easy to know what to do next in any situation. The next step you take is the one that feels the best. My mantra has become ‘take the best next step’.

No matter where our lives take us, we can always ask ourselves, what is my best next step? Which option feels the best in my body today? And when we do that, it is the only plan we’ll ever need.

Comments