How interesting to be discussing my next 20 year plan with my coach.
I had what I perceived to be a 20 year plan pre-Yahoo. I believe I can get another one. But I am not sure that my coach knows what I want. Perhaps she has never had one before? Or am I communicating what I want effectively?
Sometimes I get the feeling that she isn’t feeling that she is giving me what I am looking for. But I do value her being there for me to bounce ideas off of. Doing this kind of stuff is hard alone….
I think about way back when I was younger. Maybe my 20 year plan back then was easier to get because life was simpler. And how complex has life gotten in the last 10 years for me.
I feel like I like I have much more depth of thought on just about everything. And this definitely creates more possibilities in where I want to get to in my 20 year plan.
My last 20 year plan was very simple. It had career goals and family goals and that was about it. But the advent of the internet trashed all that. It turned my 20 year plan into a 4 year plan and left me hanging for about half a decade. This hanging didn’t do me any good. I thought that time would get me closer to new directions but actually it didn’t. With life getting more complex and me not actually working on the plan, I didn’t get a plan. I went downhill. My life had little or no direction and I didn’t know where I wanted or needed to go.
Fast forward to now. I’ve now got a coach and opened up time and space in my brain to think about this. And I’m glad I’m doing it. I’ve got renewed hope in my life and increasing self esteem on the things I’m involved in and working on. Now I just need to get the plan and execute it.
My coach thinks a 5 year plan is more realistic. Yeah this may be true that it would be easier to achieve, but maybe I just think differently. I’d like to know directionally where I’m going and feel good being on the path to there.
Somehow achieving a goal, while great in its feelings of achievement, also seem so final to me. I don’t like that.
When I took Aikido, getting a black belt was always a step in the path towards unattainable mastery of the entire art of Aikido. I’ve always known that many aspects of life are only really paths and that we’re really just students on these paths, as much as we want to be masters.
Sometimes I do think about how nice it would be to be a “master” in something…anything…. Then I would be acknowledged as a master in that discipline and people would acknowledge that and I’d be on top of the world….right?
Well, the reality is that there is someone who is always going to know more than you. In martial arts, you can get your black belt but somebody is always going to be faster/stronger/better than you. So what’s wrong with this master thing? It’s too final. It tricks your brain into thinking you’re on the top when you’re really not.
I’m a big believer in the journey is the reward (to coin a famous CEO’s phrase) and that is what I think my 20 year plan will emerge as – a bunch of paths I’d like to be on for the next 20 years and to feel fulfillment by just walking these paths….
Time to get to work on the plan….