Having no plan is kind of like death.
We know it’s a thing, but we don’t want to talk about it. So we don’t.
Let’s call plans what they are at their heart: comfort.
I ditched plans because... life experience, asking questions, and I became addicted to a simple life.
If you make plans because you don’t want to admit you don’t truly have one... let’s chat. I’ve got some perspective for you.
I. The pizza
Strolling through my kitchen, thinking about this essay, an image of a pizza came into my mind.
If you’re ambitious, you’re obsessed with leveling up, delusional about your capability... talking to yourself more than most.
Where this becomes a burden rather than exciting is when we stick to the prescribed way of life. Leveling up, by default, means possessing more.
Knowledge, material, connections.
Toppings on a pizza.
Too many toppings though, and the pizza dough gets weighed down, soggy as hell, soup.
Through years and years of operating this way, I wondered why I could never hold the thing I desired in my hands.
The first rule of leveling up is ditching the prescription... it’s not, in the end, about more.
You’ve got to strike a balance. This requires one key ingredient... knowing what enough means to you.
Most don’t ask. Or they do, don’t have a clue what the answer is, and then don’t pick it up again.
Stay in the shit long enough to realize what enough means.
For me, it didn’t mean acquiring more for more’s sake... that’s a cancer cell’s mentality. Let me grow because I can!
No.
It transitioned what was truly valuable. Not more... but less.
So if you still think leveling up is more possessions, I’m flicking you behind your ear.
It’s recognition of value... and tuning your senses to see what’s valuable to you and only you.
This is how we get out of the endless game thrust at us.
Most place their self-worth in their ability to earn. But think... You can go level up and make a bunch of money, but unless that money is enough to serve you for the rest of your life, you’re going to have to go and make more money.
Know what the money means, eh?
II. Look back at the staircase
Plans are really good at adding toppings on the pizza.
When I talk to people, it’s odd that I’m the only one saying, look backwards. It’s the whole staircase methodology.
You’re sitting on this stair. The next stair means your next level. Obviously you’ve never been there before so you have no idea how to get there.
You want it really bad.
But you don’t get what you want because you want it. It’s deeper than that. And I find looking for depth forward is harder than looking for depth backward.
Simple really. You’re not on the bottom stair. You’re somewhere in between the top and bottom. So, what’s that tell you?
You’ve. Done. This. Before.
You didn’t know how to get to the next stair in your past either. But you found a way.
And it wasn’t from a plan.
It was curiosity.
Soon, I learned that I could start leveling up quicker not from the perfect step-by-step plan, but from the understanding that I’d ascend regardless.
And so, I focused on making it fun. When you’re having fun, you’ll stop needing every detail. You won’t look ahead that much. The present is too enjoyable.
And all of the sudden, you’re on the next stair, having no true clue how you got there and it was fun the majority of the way.
III. What the plan was protecting me from
The last big plan I made was right before I shut down my community.
I’d seen the best coach in the game’s system, I liked the visual, I was inspired.
I created a perfect Venn Diagram soon after. My clients loved it. It looked cool.
Complex as hell but cool. And when it came time to start executing it, I had to lean on meaning.
There wasn’t much. I created it because I could take a seed of someone else’s idea, craft it into my own and execute like hell. But execution without fun, meaning, desire... well this fancy diagram I created was no different than a grocery list on the fridge.
So this high-executed plan protected me from something...
Original thought connected to meaning.
I’d volunteered to be a zoo animal. Having my trainer — the outside world — tell me how to do step one, then two, then three.
I ditched this in March. I’d finally seen the light. I was a really good student of the game benefitting from other people’s systems, but it had no meaning to me and no truly original, courageous thought from me.
And I realized, even if I became the best student possible, my best result could be second best. The originator would hold top spot.
I’m no silver medalist.
Plans then might make you a very good student of the game and not a good student at living your own life... and that’s the only one you got.
IV. The core variable
This is the most important bit. If you’re reading this far down, congrats, you’re one of the few who gives a shit about your own life.
Hear — without needing to understand right away — the truth:
You’re the core variable.
Much of your confusion, distrust, scarcity, lack, or any other emotion you’re not loving comes from this.
The core variable is you every time. And you don’t want to think about it, so you remove that from the equation and place all the emphasis and power on the plan.
It’s why people have to-do lists of 30, 40, 100 things on it and they can’t look at a single one and say, I care about that. It’s easier to check a box than to look at the whole list and ask if there’s a point to any of it. Because if the answer is no, the next question is, what should I be doing? Or where’s my value? Or am I lazy? And now guilt starts coming in.
This is a trust breakdown.
Someone who trusts themselves the most does not really feel guilty about anything. If you feel guilt, it’s another indicator that you have more trust to give yourself.
But let’s flip this on its head... if you don’t trust yourself, how can you trust the plan you’re putting so much effort into?
V. Where a plan earns its place
I’m not anti-plan. I think people are too pro specifics.
When in life have you ever created a plan for something you’ve never done where every single step went exactly as you expected?
It’s not the plan. It’s you. The core variable.
Plans are not as powerful as simply being the person who can be in the moment and handle whatever happens... like when the plan goes off the rails.
This then becomes the true meaning. Can I trust myself no matter what happens?
To be content in discomfort. Because plans are comfort, budgets are comfort, iteneraries are comfort.
This doesn’t mean don’t have them, it means understand that comforts are all they are.
VI. I’m living it right now
The exact path I’m on has never been done before. Content in the discomfort, I aim to be the voice on trust. When you think of self-trust, you’ll see my face, hear my words.
Guess what? I have no clue how I’m going to make this happen.
Creating a plan for the never-done is speculation. So, I put all my energy into the commitment of the thing, not how the thing is done.
This is what self-trust affords you. I know that my intuition will guide me from one first step to the next first step. There is no series of steps until they’ve been completed and you connect the dots looking backwards.
Seeing every step as a new first step has eliminated the mental load of trying to tie things together before I can explain them.
I call this having an empty container.
When the container is full of half-truths — plans, expectations, hopes — your listening is faulty.
How could you hear yourself calculating so much?
So, I empty the container to always be in tune when my intuition speaks to me.
VII. Empty the container
This happens in expression for me; private expression.
No matter the level of stress, fog, overwhelm, confusion... I know that I’ll empty the container and soon I’ll have my next first step.
So, I write, start recording a voice memo, press record on my iPhone and start going.
This is the simple act of getting it out. Label it if you want. Call it venting. Call it journaling. Call it ranting. But it’s private, so why spend time labeling it at all?
The point is a space doesn’t remain truly empty.
When you begin it’s filled with muck. So you empty.
Then, from a place of purity, listening, receptiveness... you don’t solve anything. You simply empty until something pure jumps in.
This is the next first step.
And it’s a crucial point. Don’t figure out why it jumped out at you. There’s only a short amount of time to create action around your intuition.
Act first. This creates evidence that informs future questions.
If you start questioning your intuition before you begin acting, you’re just creating a new plan in a more philosophical way.
Just move. Your inner voice already knows the plan. Don’t ask it to tell you specifics.
TIP: Double down on movement. This is where pressing record while taking a walk — outside or inside, like I was pacing around my kitchen when ideating this piece — really introduces flow. Flow benefits from movement. It’s the opposite of staring at your computer waiting for inspiration.
VIII. Try this before you close the tab (how to)
Two options. Pick which one most aligns with you.
Option 1: Press record on your phone and start walking around your house. No agenda, just start speaking and don’t stop. Talk about what you see. Talk about what happened yesterday. Just get your mouth moving. The longer you go, the more your next move takes form. When you feel your intuition is speaking a specific thing to you, stop and begin with it.
Option 2: Something I do with clients who are overwhelmed a lot is looking at their biggest source of overwhelm — their calendar, to-do list, email inbox. Instead of do what they normally do, which is look at the whole thing and try to solve the puzzle with some masterstroke, I ask them this... “What’s the one thing among all of these that if it isn’t done, the rest of the stuff doesn’t really matter?” You can do this in seconds. Look at the list, find the break point... if this isn’t done, who cares about all the other stuff... and start. Don’t solve. Just start on that. Pretend the rest of them don’t exist. I’ve seen clients who put something off for weeks do this in 30 seconds and message me two hours later and say, “I finished the whole thing.”
Focus is a heck of a thing.
IX. That’s the end (optional favor)
I hope this has helped you. You can do option 1 and option 2 in very little time, and I’m confident it’ll result in your happiest day this week.
Don’t overthink it.
Just like I didn’t overthink this assessment. I created it, launched it, and now I’m collecting feedback.
The goal of this? Start murdering your self-doubt.
Have self-doubt? This helps you start removing it from your life.
Give it a spin (takes 60-90 seconds) and then do me a favor and drop a comment or shoot me an email telling me what you think.
It’s the 1.0 version I’m hoping to build into something substantial to help you trust yourself more and more every day. Your feedback will help me get there quicker.
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P.S. I’m buying the first person who takes this for a spin and messages sends me a photo of their archetype a free coffee gift card. No questions. No strings. Just thanks for reading this, doing the thing, and helping me out.