Moon Mis-Landing: How Perfect Planning Can Destroy Chances Of Delivering On Our Promises

I had some time off recently. Which was great. But as we know, going away means coming back. And coming back means catching up. Easy enough though. Because I'd already planned how I'd get back on track. Simples.

And then life happened.

"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars" said Norman Vincent Peale. A great motto to keep things moving. To push ourselves. Reach new heights. And that's great, right?

Great unless we promised to actually hit the moon. And promised it'd be tomorrow. By 9am. So everyone's waiting. Expectantly. With press crew and champagne. And celebratory cake. Then landing somewhere not-the-moon becomes a problem.

And so the fear sets in.

The fear we won't meet expectations. That we'll fail. Disappoint. We'll let everyone down. Including ourselves. And none of us like to let others down. But what if we never actually involved anyone else in that promise?

In best-case-scenario-planning my return, I hadn't realised I'd way over-committed myself. So stress-levels began to increase. And one of the best ways to kill productivity and creativity is to stress about the need to be productive and create. It took a while, but eventually I recognised something important:

The only person holding me to those promises was me.

Of course, some things needed to happen. But it's amazing how our perspective of have-to can shift once we allow ourselves to see past the fear of not-happening. And what new paths then open up for the way forward.

"No plan survives first contact with the enemy". Because a plan is just that. A plan. The best ones change with circumstance. And once I accepted that, things became much easier to navigate.

Shoot for the moon because we won't go anywhere unless we try. Shoot for the moon because we might surprise ourselves seeing what we're capable of once we do. But shoot knowing that we might need to change trajectory - or even destination - once we've launched.

And shoot knowing that's it's ok when we inevitably have to.

(Struggling with making or sticking to plans, worried about failing, or often feel like you let yourself or others down? Cognitive Hypnotherapy in Leighton Buzzard can help you. Get in touch to learn how)