Every person, no matter their age or gender, have goals. From the young who can barely run, to the old who can’t run. Everyone has goals. Whether it be short-term goals or long-term goals; goals that will take a day or even years to achieve, each and everyone has goals. To reach them we all have to do the same thing – plan. We need to plan for ourselves and our lives. It is said, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” This is why planning is important. It’s like a map we draw ourselves to reach that destination, to reach that goal. Some people succeed at it and some don’t. To succeed is to achieve what you’ve always planned for, but what happens when that plan fails, or when we fail to achieve that goal?
Humanity is such that we believe we are owed everything. We believe, wrongfully so, that whatever we want, we should get. So, when we come up with a plan, we always believe that we are destined to succeed with it. We believe we are owed that success because we have planned everything out. Life is almost hurtfully funny though and the plans we make seldom go according to how we want it to. When things fall apart most of time, the people who created these plans also fall apart.
For example, a man can plan how he is going to get his dream car. He can plan how he’s going to buy it, where he is going to get the money, how much he’s going to save every month towards that purchase, etc. But as the days and months pass, he might hit a few stumbling blocks that could derail his plan. They could be small or large obstacles nevertheless; they mess up his plan to buy the car. Suddenly, the car he wanted to buy within a year becomes the car he can only buy in two- or three years’ time. When the man realizes that his plan is slowly coming apart, he also comes apart. Meanwhile, this man may have strongly believed in his plan, so much so that he felt he already owned the car. As humans, we must understand one thing; if the plan doesn’t work, we ought to change it and never become despondent due to it falling apart.
Read – Leadership: A West African Perspective – An Article by Bakary S. Sonko – The Gambia
Peter F. Drucker once said, “Plans are worthless, but planning is invaluable.” What exactly does he mean by that? In simple terms, it means having a plan really means nothing. It’s a worthless piece of paper. It’s something that you wrote out, a map that shows you the way you believe you should take. If plans meant anything at all, then each and everyone would succeed once they made plans.
However, the process of planning is invaluable because it helps one to plot out a course to get what they want. Whereas a plan might fail, planning will never fail you. It is the simple process of giving yourself a road to follow. Sometimes all we need in life is some stability and that only comes with planning. A person who has mastered the art of planning is one who has mastered the way of achieving set goals because no matter how many plans fail, there will always be a new plan with which to reach the destination.
What made someone a great general in the past was their planning skill. Several great generals won battles that people thought they would lose all because of their great planning skills. They spent countless hours surveying the landscapes and other aspects to give them an advantage over their enemies. They planned to the smallest margins, and if their plan was failing before their eyes, they did not fall to their knees and give up. No, they went back to the drawing board to plan again and find a way to achieve victory, to achieve greatness. That is what life is really about. Those who can continue to plan, no matter how many times they have seen their plans fail, will be victorious.
Read – Rachael Twinomugisha – The Ugandan Writer, Lawyer, and Teacher
A plan that fails is not a bad thing. It gives you the opportunity to learn how to handle situations that caused the plan to fail. We seldom see the positives in the bad things in life. As such, we let failure and fear consume us and make us abandon our plans in hopes of getting something better. But if only we can dust ourselves off and regroup, we will realize how possible it is to have what we wanted to gain. Although humanity is unkind to itself, the moment we taste failure, we feel as if we can never succeed. To plan is easy but to plan after failure is courageous.
We should all vow to ourselves that no matter what our goals are; long-term or short-term, we will strive to accomplish them even if our original plan fails. We will dust ourselves off, give it another go, and do our best to achieve those goals. As the saying goes, “If plan A doesn’t work out relax. The alphabets have 25 more letters.”
This Magazine is published by a team of professionals and downloadable for free. If you would like to support our work, please buy us coffee – https://www.buymeacoffee.com/wsamagazine
Absolutely brilliant