Creating life plans

I’m at a crossroads in my life. Yes, another one! No matter how solid our plans are, we’ll get messages that something isn’t working, something doesn’t feel right, and we need to listen.

First, I resorted to old habits. I went to the planning board, and told myself I need to decide what I want to do – with, shall we say, my next 20 years? I’m a planner… actually, my specialty is strategic planning, but suddenly, it wasn’t working for me. 

I’ve been in a funk for several weeks now. It wasn’t until I got really serious, honest, and vulnerable with myself that I started to see more clearly. There I was creating plans for five, ten, and even 20 years. Planning for 20 years? Seriously, Sharri? My heart said to me, “Sharri, that just feels like an exercise of fantasy.”

I only want you to plan for the short-term

What? I’m a planner. I love plans and I’m good at making plans. But my heart pushed back and said “No, I only want you to plan for the short-term.”  I was shocked but as I said back a couple of podcasts ago, your life’s golden nuggets come from your heart, not the great brain you have in your head. 

So, on a very long walk with myself, I asked, “What time frame ARE you comfortable with planning?”  Loud and clear, I got the message of “Five years max and really only two years.”

Wow…Two years? That’s super short-term!!  Companies take at least 3-5 years to pivot!

When your kids are young, you can plan ahead 10 or even 15 years! You’re already wondering what they’ll end up studying, when their in-grade school! Then if you’re thinking about quitting the corporate rat race, you’re often way beyond five years. 

Dare I bring up financial planning? It is ALL about LONG -term planning… those darn actuarial charts now have us living until age 90!

Planning more like teenagers do may give us better insight

Even after arguing with my heart, I heard to not plan much longer than two years. Now, I’m not being morbid… it’s not like I heard I’m going to die in two years. What I heard is that right now, I need to take life in smaller chunks and then I’ll be happier. 

I suddenly saw that as we age (or when those kids are out of the house; or when we step away from the corporate job) maybe we need to start planning like we did when we were teenagers and go super short term. 

I’ve stopped doing this, but when I use to ask my teenage grandkids questions about their lives beyond one year – I get this sort of blank stare – and they usually say, “Grandma, how could I possibly know that?”  Maybe COVID changed us, but as grown women, we’ve returned to short-term planning – much like we did when we were teenagers. 

So here I am – a woman of a certain age – and I’ve got on the same planning hat as my teenage granddaughters, and I get just as glassy-eyed when someone asks me that question, “What do you think you’ll be doing in ten years?”  I have NO idea! 

What will my business look like then? No idea. 

Will I still have my Paris Apartment? No idea. 

Will I finally be in the best shape of my life? No idea. 

Will I have met the love of my life? (Wonderful thought, but no idea. I only know I have to live a fabulous life even if Mr. Wonderful never arrives.)

Plan shorter term, feel happier!

So, my recommendation is that if you want to feel happier, forget about ten year or twenty-year life planning. Focus on this week, this month, this year and maybe – at the most – five years out.

So, ask your heart: how far into the future, do you feel happy and comfortable planning and go with that number! 

Now, the next question I asked myself is, what do I really want to do? 

I’ve brought up that question before in other podcasts, but something wasn’t right with it. Why? Because it is a much bigger and more difficult question to ask than it sounds like on face value. 

Think about it – with no context – your mind can’t find a way to really answer that question concisely. Without context or parameters, you’ll get super random or super vague answers like I want to get more fit, I want to lose weight, I want to write a book, I want to start a business, I want to travel more. Blah, blah, blah. Vague and random. 

So back to the question. “What do you want to do on a daily basis over the next few years?” “What do you want your daily life to look like?” “What do you want to be doing each day? How do you want to be spending your time?” Really specific right?

Now, if you want to uplevel your question, you could ask that scary question…” If I only had the surety of five years, what would I be doing with my life? How would I choose to spend my time?” But that one is just too scary for me, but you might feel differently. 

What connects you with your heart?

However, you ask the question, “What do you want to be doing on a daily basis, which reconnects you with your heart?”  I was surprised at the answers I received, but first I want to tell you what led up to this.

As you know, I started the EW magazine during the pandemic. I’ve loved it. I loved starting it, I loved imagining how it could flow, I loved interviewing incredible women. It began as “Be the Real You” and then quickly became “Extraordinary Women.” I created an elaborate LONG-TERM plan… I was going to spin off coaching programs and groups, I was even thinking of eventually making it a membership site. 

I worked hard at it but suddenly I woke up one day and said… something is wrong with this! I need to change something… I feel a drive or a need to do something more. But what? That’s when the blog came to me. At first, I argued with myself and said, are you nuts? But then my heart said… but you want to share more. 

Stories like the time you went to the Dior Gallery in Paris and felt transported… you can’t share that in social media and goodness, the magazine can’t be like a daily newspaper! 

Hence the blog! I began it last week and it’s called the EW Notebook….and I’m having a blast. 

Do you have activities you pursue just for enjoyment?

BUT and this is where you come in… I also heard that I need to find a hobby. 

This one took a little longer to uncover. I’m not a gal with many hobbies. My father once asked me if I EVER had fun, which at the time and for decades after I took as a huge criticism of me. But one morning, when I was on a long walk through the very quiet Kensington Garden in London, his question came up for me yet again and I suddenly realized that maybe he didn’t mean I wasn’t a fun person, maybe he really meant to ask what I liked doing for fun. 

Now my father was a guy with hobbies, he still is. His favorite hobbies are playing cards, fishing, and hunting all while drinking (the drinking part was his most loved hobby.) I didn’t like any of his hobbies, especially not the drinking, but as I walked through the park, I realized that other than reading, or cooking and baking, which I now do very little now because I live alone, I don’t have anything I do for the fun of it. I’m a woman with no hobbies.

Gosh, from the time I was young, I knew best how to work. Lots of reasons why, but as I walked through Kensington Gardens, I saw that I never really embraced a hobby because I didn’t spend enough time on any one thing other than work, for it to become a hobby!

And my heart cried out to me, “Change that up Sharri!” 

So, I sat on a park bench and started to talk to the pigeons. Yep, this American gal was starting to resemble the old bird woman in Mary Poppins. Thank heavens no one was around! 

One bird in particular didn’t really look like a pigeon. She had fluffy feathers and was multicolored. A perfect outlier in the pigeon world. Well, I started talking to her and realized I’ve always liked birds. I suddenly remembered that as a kid, I used to draw birds. I did an excellent Baltimore Oriole. Now I hadn’t thought about those drawings for years if not decades! 

But remember, the heart knows! So, I let that thought sink in and decided I’m going to return to drawing my birds. Next, I’m going to explore the world of birding. Yep, hiking through places looking at birds. The other evening while out for dinner with a friend, I announced my new hobby plan and she almost fell off her chair. That would provide a purpose to my walks, and trips and for now, I’m willing to just explore the idea. I might hate it, but that’s what the two-year plan is all about: trying out new activities. As my grandmother said, “Walk to the end of the dock, dear… plug your nose and jump!”

Questions to ask yourself to find the timing and your heart’s desire

1. For the moment, try sticking to short-term planning, only go out to what time frame is really comfortable for you. Force yourself to turn the channel if your brain wants to go longer term, make yourself stay short – one year, even 90 days – whatever feels most comfortable for you.
   
   This is going to sound really bizarre given I’m a coach, but pull in all those big, fantastic, audacious dreams you have just for now, and experience life week by week as your one-year plan starts to take shape. 

2. Next, ask yourself what you want to do each and every day. Try out different daily schedules, incorporate different activities. Go week by week. Make it a fun game. Then pick one day each week, when you’re going to download what you learned that week and make changes and adjustments if needed. If I hate drawing birds or going birding, I’m going to try something else. 

3. And last, but most important, listen to your heart. Go for those walks in nature all by yourself and talk out loud. Talk to the birds if you feel so inclined. What’s important here is that you learn to dialogue with your heart. That is where all your amazing wisdom resides. 

Connecting and dialoging with your heart is THE best self-care activity you can ever do. 

Now, if you enjoyed this episode, I’d love if you could take a minute to rate our podcast and subscribe. We’ve got lots of super interesting conversations coming up and if you subscribe, you’ll automatically get a notice of each new podcast, which comes out each Monday. I so look forward to our conversation next week. As we say in Paris, à Bientôt!

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