I often see and hear discussions about when young people should have their “life plan” set. Sometimes young people feel like they don’t know what they’re doing. They feel lost, and that makes them feel like they’re “falling behind.”
This isn’t just young people, of course. Everyone feels that way sometimes. I certainly do.
So here’s advice to everyone who feels that way: no plan will ever be good enough. No goal will be realistic, or guaranteed to make you happy if you achieve it. You will never have it all figured out to the degree where you no longer have to make active decisions in your life.
Because that’s what we’re all hoping for. We’re hoping to make a plan so good and goals so insightful that once they’re made, we can just “follow the plan” for the rest of our lives and get everything we want just laid out in front of us.
Some of the unhappiest people I know are people who made (what felt like at the time) exactly that kind of plan, and then didn’t get the perfect results ten or twenty years later. They not only feel lost, they feel cheated. They “did everything right” and still didn’t get what they felt they deserved.
The correct answer isn’t to say “It’s okay that I don’t have my plan yet.” The correct answer is to say “There will never be a plan.”
Instead of setting goals or making plans, live by values. You can make the values anything that’s important to you, but if you make a set and stick by them, your life will generally go in the direction you want. You can change your values, too – one of your values should be how, when, and why you do that.
A value that says “This is the set of characteristics I will value in those with whom I form close relationships” will do more for you than a plan that says “I will be married by 27.” A value that says “I will always seek to improve my skills in this category” will do more for you than a plan that says “I’ll make partner by 35.”
If you feel lost, it isn’t because you don’t have a plan. It’s because you don’t know what your values are. Or maybe you have an inkling, but you’re not living them as strongly as you should. Here’s the good news: that’s not something you have to wait for. You can do that today.
The Opportunity Machine 