When the Plan Goes Pear-shaped
What do you do when things go pear-shaped? Do you panic? Do you resist? Do you give in?
I’m not talking about the monumental, life-altering shifts. I’m talking about the mildly frustrating, day to day, that’s-not-what-my-plan-was kind of way.
Yesterday afternoon, that’s exactly what happened. The “plan” I had in mind got derailed. I was frustrated. Annoyed. I had been counting on that plan—looking forward to it. Planning on it.
I could feel the tension begin to grow in my body. It felt like a fly that has slipped into the house and is buzzing against the glass, unable to get through to the outside even though it can see the sky clearly. It was an insistent kind of energy. Inquieta is the word they use here in Spanish. “Unquiet.”
I knew that with that kind of buzzing in my system, I couldn’t just sit still. Sitting still would have been impossible. I had to move. I had to cover some ground. But my horses were in the middle of their dinner, so I changed out of my boots and jeans, put on my running shoes, and headed for the beach.
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I still think of myself as a runner, but the reality is that I don’t actually run anymore. In fact, my last bout of regular running was when I trained for the New York Marathon—all the way back in 2007!
For a long time, I’ve had the desire to get back to it. I enjoy it for both the physical and the mental clearing - clearing my lungs and clearing my mind. But lately, whenever I have tried to add it back to the mix, I just couldn’t figure out where it fit. Gym in the mornings, horses in the afternoons, writing, working, and gardening in between. Where could running fit? Without a designated space in the schedule, one day led to the next and the running simply didn’t happen.
Until yesterday.
As I was running along the beach—gasping a bit from the lack of cardio condition, Pacas nipping at my heels—I realized something: the only reason I was out here in the first place was because my “plan” for the afternoon had fallen apart. Had things gone “according to plan,” I would have been on a horse.
But once I was actually putting one foot in front of the other, jogging along the water line of the high tide, I realized that this evening hour was the perfect time of day—and the perfect way—to fit running back into the mix.
The “not going according to plan” had morphed into the very plan that had been eluding me.
It is so easy to spend our energy trying to keep everything on the path. We assume that if the plan eludes us, we are somehow losing our way. We must stick to the plan! It is how we move forward!
But sometimes, the pear-shaped afternoon is exactly what we need without even knowing it. It is a moment of “soft eyes” where life stops us from heading straight down the road so that we can finally notice the trail we’ve been looking for all along. A gentle nudge.
Yesterday reminded me that “taking the reins” of our lives doesn’t always mean grasping the plan. It doesn’t always mean charging out ahead or leading. Sometimes, it means being able and willing to follow the nudge. To follow the breadcrumbs. To let life lead us to the place we didn’t even realize we wanted to be.
If you know that feeling of inquieta —if you are tired of white-knuckling the plan and wanting to start following the breadcrumbs—I’d love for you to join us for The Return.
We begin this Sunday, May 17th. It’s a 5-week, self-guided journey designed to fit into the “cracks” of your busy life, helping you find a deep seat and a sense of agency, even when the world gets a bit too bouncy.
