This is your permission to make a new plan
One that is reflective of your deepest callings. One that changes with your seasons.
Hi friend,
Friday was my last day at the company where I’ve worked for the past eight years, which means that this week has required me to do a whole lot of clearing. On Wednesday, I peeled away the collage of photos from the dividers of my workspace, and in doing so was brought back to late nights spent at work events with my coworkers-slash-best-friends, Prosecco glasses splashing bubbles onto branded T-shirts and boppy conference music blaring in the background. The next day, I pawned off the mishmash of objects I’d stashed in my desk drawers to my fellow desk neighbors and on Friday, I performed the arduous task of digitally clearing my laptop before returning it to the business.
While doing so, I came across an old Word document from five years ago: a file titled “Five Year Plan,” with a last edited date of December 6th, 2018.
I hovered my mouse over the title, a small smile curving into my cheek as I was vividly reminded of the girl who had, one drizzling December afternoon, spent hours concocting this “five year plan” in a South Kensington coffeeshop. She was twenty-five, eager to prove herself and desperate to earn a permanent role in the London office (at that point, I was only supposed to be here for a four month secondment). I remember creating it to share with the Marketing Director as a way of demonstrating to both to her and to myself that I was a serious marketer with serious drive, ready to do whatever necessary to rise through the ranks and, by the age of thirty, have been promoted multiple times, held various roles, and be managing a small team of her own.
As I perused through this portal into my 25-year-old psyche, I both laughed and cried. I laughed because at twenty-five, I was idealistic and unrealistic, believing that I could be promoted to a level that is far above what would have ever been possible in five years. And I cried because, even though I hadn’t looked at this plan since its creation, there were many elements that had actualized in an eerily synchronistic fashion.
Now, I sit writing to you from another London coffeeshop, not far from where I’d assembled that corporate trajectory all those years ago. This week is my first week at my “new job,” as I’m calling it — my first few days of exploring life as a freelancing creative. And as I do so, I find myself searching for structure again, for some semblance of routine that I can tuck myself into, neatly.
In other words — I find myself wanting to make a brand new plan.
Because planning is powerful. Writing things down, bringing them out into the physical — this is an essential part of manifestation, of creating your own reality by declaring your deepest desires to the universe. One of my colleagues once said to me, “Be careful what you manifest. It almost always comes true, in one way or another.”
She was right. Those targets I set for myself all those years ago did come true: I’d gotten the rights to live and work in London, I’d earned the exact role that I’d outlined as my “dream role,” and true to the document’s predictions, I’d gotten promoted and taken on leadership positions.
But when I achieved the promotion and earned more money and stepped into the leadership roles — I was always left with a barely-there, slightly hollowed-out feeling, like I’d run a furious race only to find that there was no one cheering by the sidelines.
I see now that this was because I’d created a plan based on what I’d believed I was supposed to want to achieve, rather than orient it around the milestones that were calling to me from the deepest parts of my being. And while these milestones made sense to me at the time, they were not the goals that, once reached, would align me with my purpose.
And therein lies the danger of this type of planning: we make plans for the future from a place of not knowing ourselves, and then realize that, years later, we have an entirely different lens of what success looks like. We set our sights on highly specific outcomes, not noticing that in doing so, we are forcing ourselves into a tunnel towards only that which we may not desire any longer. And in this way, we sometimes keep ourselves limited — stuck within a mold that we have already outgrown.
Our plans must first be true to ourselves, right down to our being. They must also be adaptable, ready to be bended and mended to align with our growth. Our lives are rushing, fleeting things that are far too valuable to be spent living on an old idea of success. Every day is a day of renewal, another twenty-four hour period that will ask us to leave our old self yawning in bed while we greet the day, drink our coffee, and evolve.
So how do we approach planning differently? What practices can we employ to create plans that magnetize our truest callings — and that are readily adaptable to our changing inner landscapes?
1. We don’t make five year plans at all. Five year plans suggest that we know what we’re going to want in two years, or three years, or four. In reality, our trajectories are not so straightforward. Hearts get broken, pandemics hit, illness strikes. We are in a constant state of expansion, and to set plans that require us to remain in the same form is to be ignorant to our own unfolding.
2. We come to know and name our deepest unrealized callings. This is not the fleeting business idea you had once and never thought about again, and it’s not the city you travelled to last summer and said casually, “I could live here,” before never returning. These are the callings that are nestled deeply in your bones, the ones that have been there since childhood, the ones that — consistently — have come to the surface over and over again.
3. We write down details about the most beautiful year we could imagine. Whilst planning ahead for five years is murkier, thinking one year ahead can help us to shine a light where we can only see darkness. Use your imagination to think about the most beautiful year you could imagine: what does winter look like, spring, summer, fall? Who are you spending your time with and how are you spending your days? Getting creative and using your imagination is one way to free yourself from the rigidity of planning — from becoming entranced with material outcomes, rather than how you want your life to feel.
4. We honor practices that encourage us to know ourselves in the present moment. Every day, we wake up to a new version of ourselves. Every day, we have the chance to redefine our goals. To let go of tired ones, and to make space for new ones. Solo walks through nature, meditation, journaling or any other kind of creative act can become mediums to more deeply understand ourselves at present.
From my perch behind the coffeeshop window, I watch as cyclists whir through the streets and hoards of commuters amble past, headphones taking up space in their ears as they block out the world around them. I wonder how many of them are sticking to plans that are no longer aligned — plans that now feel like the sweater you bought three years ago, the one that’s been bent out of shape, pilled, and no longer fits. I wonder how many of them are on the edge of something, if they could step away from the old plan, and into one that mirrors their deepest callings.
We are always one change of direction away from directing ourselves an entirely new path ahead. We are always one new plan away from realizing our oldest, truest desires.
What does your planning process look like? What do you have your sights set on, and how are you allowing yourself to change your goals with your seasons? Respond to this email with your thoughts — I’d love to hear.
In gratitude,
Cecilia
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Our Common Threads is written and edited by Cecilia Callas.
Really enjoyed reading this piece today! Totally agree on writing things down, bringing them out into the physical. Creating your path in life is so important!