Planning is a very obsessive habit for those who feel the need to map out their lives. I have found that to myself planning out an entire trip, or career, or next five years of my life can seem to be a very obsessive and controlling characteristic. I believe I started to plan so far out into my future because I felt that I had to due to the questions I began to get asked by adults. Questions such as “What is your major?” “What do you want to do with your life?” and “What are your plans after graduation?” After awhile these questions just hang in the air and something that you never thought mattered in the moment suddenly needs to be answered and figured out immediately. I became a person that had to have a plan for everything, which is not the wisest way to live your life. When you begin to obsess about having a plan, you will feel defeated, you will miss out on the present, you are over trying, and change becomes difficult to accept.
Always having a plan can truly be defeating. Not everything will go the way you expect it to, and when this notion gets stuck in the mind that something needs to turn out a specific way it ends up being wildly disappointing. Planning so far out gives us too much expectation for something to happen exactly how it is pictured which is not realistic. Since I graduated high school, I thought I needed to have my entire life planned out, but there is so much more to life than our future. First off, not everyone knows their future and whether or not they actually have one. This may be something awful to hear, but I am a realist, you do not know how long you are going to live. You just don’t. You are not God, and therefore you do not know what is in store for you. Live day by day, and even week by week, but be flexible with what you do. I had my future all planned out my freshman year of college, and then I re-planned, and re-planned, and now I am finally realizing that planning everything to a ‘T’ is not working. Yes, it is good to think ahead and find what you are good at, and know that when the time comes around some decisions will need to be made. However, when you are 18 years old you do not even know who you are yet away from mom and dad, and it is okay not to know your future. It is ultimately not up to us to have our futures all planned and figured out, that is when we need to trust in God and have faith that he knows why we are where we are, and where we are going.
Constantly thinking about the future distracts us from what is going on in the present. I have missed out on many opportunities, because I was too focused on my life in four or five years. If worrying about something needs to happen, it should be about what my responsibilities for the next day are, or how am I going to be a better person, or how can I serve my friends and family better, but definitely not where will I work in the next five years be or why I need to be married by 25. God has us where we are for a reason, whether to make an impact on someone, or to be impacted by something, but nothing is an accident. If we get caught up in our future, then we can not be present for God to do something wonderful in our lives in the present. Again we do not know how much time we have left on this earth, so we need to live in such a way that we are being intentional with the time we have been given now.
When we are so stuck on the future that we have this plan we need to follow, we are not allowed to change. If there is change then the future has changed. Change is terrifying, but if we are not constantly growing and changing we will never improve or become better people. Change is good, and once someone learns that changing to grow and to evolve into a better human being is what God has set out for us then anything can be possible. When we do not have our minds fixated on one thing in our future we are allowing ourselves to accept a better opportunity or venture that can lead us to the best experience in our life. Please do not fixate on your futures, but rather keep an open mind about everything, you are most likely wrong about what your life will look like in a few years. Let God show you what He has in store for you in time and if you allow Him to, He can surprise you in amazing ways.
