Build trust with planning less

Don’t go beyond plan B. If you are attempting plan C through Z, you are not trusting yourself or the universe.

This is an idea my yoga teacher expressed while in India. I didn’t understand it at all. I was confused as to why over planning was an act of mistrust. The part of me that loves plans was offended. But I also simply didn’t understand why planning could ever be bad. I am notoriously over prepared, especially while traveling and it has served me well. Or so I thought. But this morning I started to rewind through my life and see how over planning was always rooted in a place of lacking trust.

Full embodiment of a lesson I intellectually learned many times before is a feeling I will never tire of. The “ah ha” moment that feels like a lightening strike of understanding. When all the circuits finally connect and the light bulb shines bright, illuminating any shadow of a doubt. It is in these moments we finally see the doubt we have carried with us even while we outwardly believed the lesson. I had one of these moments today and it was quite a revelation.

I have been back in the states for the past week and a sense of uncertainty has clouded my vision this entire time. I had planned the first two months of this year off (or as I spoke on earlier, it planned itself) and very little beyond it. It feels uncomfortable having completed the part of my journey that was to a degree known. I did this intentionally though because I wanted to be able to flow with what came up. I didn’t want to have rigid plans and miss opportunities that I felt called to. However, living in uncertainty is still fairly new to me and I can’t say I always love it. Old patterns started to pop back up, especially doubt and over planning.

Let me take you back to the world of Jenna almost 20 years ago. Holy shit, I am old! Also, holy shit, I have grown and changed a lot, how incredible! *Side note, I am obsessed with this time in my life. I believe aging is the greatest thing that happens to us. Quit believing the lies of society that tell us life is for the young. I firmly know the best is yet to come, for me and for all of us! Thank you for coming to my Ted talk, now proceed.

I used to be obsessed with my calendar and planner. I felt more stable if I had almost every minute of every day planned out. If I knew where I was going to be and what I was going to do, I could schedule the uncertainty out of my life. I lived like this for a very long period. I can still recall one semester of college where every day of the week I had classes 8am to 5pm and soccer practice 5-7pm. On Wednesday nights I would go from soccer straight to teaching scuba class until midnight in the pool. I would then get up Thursday morning and lifeguard at the same pool at 6am. I honestly do not even know when I slept and ate during that time. In a way, this was the pinnacle of my planned life.

But when I was living in Pittsburgh and in grad school for physical therapy, I kept a schedule that makes zero sense to me now. I was in classes and clinical rotations full time during the week. But somehow I still found time to train for a marathon, work every Saturday morning for four hours, volunteer at church every Sunday morning, nanny for two kiddos the rest of the day on Sundays, be a mentor through big brothers big sisters, and sort of have a social life…I’m exhausted just writing that down. No wonder I developed chronic pain during that time in my life. (That is a story for another time!)

The rigidity of living that way makes me squirm now but I loved how safe it felt then. I knew exactly what every day would hold for me. I was surrounded by certainty. All I needed to do was look at a piece of paper and I would know where I needed to be and what I needed to be doing. At times, this level of certainty can be a supportive guide. When life is chaotic, finding ways to stabilize is necessary and a helpful tool, but at what cost?

For me, the cost was losing trust in myself. I did not know how to truly trust myself, I only knew how to trust my ability to plan.

Cultivating trust within myself has been an ongoing and intentional practice over the past three years. I am finally finding moments where I wholeheartedly trust my knowing above all else. But clearly, old habits never die and in moments of uncertainty, I can easily fall back into the rabbit hole of over planning.

This entire week, part of me wanted to jump in to action and start planning my next few months desperately. To seek a sense of stability and control by putting plans onto paper. But I suppose the advice from the first sentence above had worked its way into my subconscious. A little nudge told me to sit in the uncertainty and ride out this wave.

Not over planning is a radical act of trust. To simply allow and let everything find me rather than rigidly holding onto things that didn’t feel quite right. Finally, not going beyond plan B made complete sense to me. I still do not love the discomfort of not knowing what is coming next but I can allow this feeling to be present while still trusting. This shifted me and also made me realize two things. Cultivating trust requires mindful presence. And every thought creates it’s own reality.

Our subconscious brain does not have the same orientation to time and space as we consciously do. When we watch a natural disaster or horrific war on TV, part of our brain believes we are in that event. When we are ruminating on an event of the past, part of our brain believes we are reliving that moment. When we create plans for the future, part of our brain sees that plan as a fact. This is why watching the news too often can dysregulate our nervous system, not letting go for the past can weigh us down, and why manifesting our future is possible. Basically, we can travel through time and space whenever we want! This is incredible but also unnerving!

This may sound weird but it is neuroscience. Our brain is constantly creating our own reality. The world we live in is a projection created by our mind. How I see the world is absolutely unique to me. This means how I perceive an event will always be slightly different than the way anyone else perceives it. With a lot of extrapolating and a little stretching, this means that every thought I think creates a reality of its own. To a degree, my brain is playing out a million different variations of reality at any given moment. It is as if we all have our own Marvel multiverse within. Again, this is fascinating and also terrifying!

When I over plan and prepare, I am essentially giving my brain more multiverses to explore. I am creating reality after reality within my mind to the point where it is difficult to decipher what is the truth. This is why cultivating mindful presence is so imperative to finding a calm mind and being able to trust myself again. The more I allow my brain to be in this moment, rather than thinking and planning of all the potential future outcomes, the more my brain is in the same place that I am. Presence to the now can begin to soften all the projections our mind wants to create.

When our mind is calmer, it is often easier to find clarity. With clarity, comes less drive towards over planning. If I can stay in the now, I can create one plan rather than twenty. Just think of all the brain power that is being saved if there is only one reality to explore rather than multiverses! So presence and less planning go hand in hand. When we cultivate one, we cultivate the other. A positive feedback loop is created.

This far outweighs the negative feedback loop that can come from over planning. Ruminating on all the possibilities, working through every potential outcome, requires a lot of brain power, even when done subconsciously. An exhausted brain cannot be calm and present, it will fall into default mode aka the opposite of mindful presence. One negatively impacts the other and makes it harder to dig yourself out.

I am currently still in the process of digging myself out of a hole I buried myself in long ago. My favorite tool currently is yoga. I have slowly shifted my mind, body and spirit towards the positive feedback loop of mindful presence and less planning. It has taken many years and more hours of studying, reading, listening, and getting quiet with myself than I can count. But these moments of embodied understanding are absolutely worth the time and effort.

This is an incredibly long and convoluted way of saying, our minds are powerful. Each thought we think creates a reality of its own. Coming back to the moment and being present to what is can calm our mind. Creating one plan rather than twelve can help our brains work more efficiently. Don’t go beyond plan B.

Also, we are all superhero’s and can jump through time and space, so that’s pretty cool!