Hi Colin,

As a big fan of your podcast, various newsletters, and general thinking/perspectives, I wanted to ask a quick question.

What questions do you use to guide you when plan A, that you might have invested a lot of time and income into, doesn’t go according to plan?

How do you guide yourself when deciding on plans B/C/D when you might have been planning on settling into Plan A long term, but suddenly that isn’t feasible?

A year and a half ago I left an unhappy, unsafe job situation in international development in one country, to move to another country: my current home. Planning has always come easily to me, and I set myself several goals, all of which I later accomplished.

Just as I was turning my attention to refining my career as a freelancer, my beloved home has been hit with massive civil unrest.

I’ve found that my normal decision-making processes have stalled out here. I don’t know if this is due to the uncertain nature of the local situation, an emotional reaction to having the life I built so radically changed (burning barricades and nightly teargas doesn’t promote great self-reflection), or if I’m just stuck.

As I mentioned, I’m usually pretty good at tearing plans down and building new ones in their place when they’re not satisfying me in the way I had anticipated, but it’s not coming as easy this time. I would greatly appreciate any guiding questions or perspective you might have.

Cheers,

C

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Hey C-

While it truly sucks that variables beyond your control are messing with your plans after all the investments you’ve made, you’ve demonstrated that you’re more than capable of building that kind of foundation, and that means you can do it again (and again, and again). You can set new goals, hit new milestones, and build another amazing something, somewhere.

What’s more, you’re in a solid position to take what you learned from the last building-of-infrastructure process and apply it to a new set of plans.

Every new beginning is an opportunity to implement lessons you’ve learned but lacked the excuse to go ahead and apply.

It can be uncomfortable and taxing and even painful to start fresh—especially when it wasn’t your choice to do so—but it’s also an impetus to rebuild, recalibrate, and reorganize things a little bit better than last time around.

That’s what I try to focus on, at least: the opportunities unearthed by such situations, rather than the fact that I’m going to have to work hard to rebuild when I’d planned to sit and enjoy what I already built, for a while.

Consider that your goals might be, currently, tied up in a place and on a path that are no longer viable for what you want to achieve. It can be difficult to acknowledge to oneself that one’s plans may be based on outdated information and realities, and thus, new plans and dreams and metrics for success could be necessary. But once you’ve got new goals, some new ambitions to work toward and think about, your fresh set of unasked-for next steps may begin to seem exciting rather than sadly necessary. Or at the very least, less taxing than they previously seemed.

If your paradigm shifts, in other words, it’s often worth shifting with it and seeing what you can come up with within that new system—what’s possible now that everything has changed.

Results will vary, of course, but a combination of focusing on the things I can control and resetting my expectations and goals accordingly has almost always helped me cope when I’ve been in similar situations.

I’m very sorry that things have taken that kind of turn, both for you and for the city you care about and have come to see as your home.

But I’m also excited for you and your next steps. New beginnings are rich with possibility, and I hope your feeling of being stuck is soon replaced with a renewed sense of, and enthusiasm for, life’s abundance of wonderful maybes.