You often hear business strategists, marketing gurus, or sales traders tell you that you need to “build a plan and then go execute it”.
Which is kind of obvious, right? Having a plan is important. It’s hard to get much of anything done without a substantive plan. And without executing what’s on the plan, having a plan doesn’t really matter in the first place.
Plans and potential and effort and execution are all wildly important for you to get to where you want to be. But what is often left unsaid is about everything that you can’t plan for.
You can’t plan for an unexpected accident. You can’t plan for an unfortunate health diagnosis. You can’t plan for your children to get hurt or your company to go bankrupt or your boss to be replaced by a jerk.
You can’t plan for those things.
Frankly, you don’t even want to think of those things. But those things are likely to happen. More likely to happen than most of your plan.
Life isn’t as ideal as you think it should be. Just because you plan for things to go perfectly doesn’t mean that is what is going to happen. Most of the time, things will go horribly unexpectedly wrong.
That’s not something to sit around and worry about. That’s just something you need to be comfortable with — deep down in your soul.
You need to know that adversity and stress, uncertainty, fear and pain are what make your plan so special. Each time something unexpected or unfortunate comes across your way, you are forced to make a decision. You decide whether you are going to continue to execute your plan or whether you’re going to be distracted, depressed, and discouraged by what life does naturally — create chaos.
Your business life will melt down at some time.
So will your personal life, your health and possibly your wealth.
That’s not because you’re a bad person or because you did something horribly wrong that demands you bear horrific consequences.
Bad things happen to good people because that is life’s way of making good people awesome.
It tests your mettle. It makes you believe in you. Amidst the worst of circumstances, you are reminded of your ability to achieve incredible success
So go build a plan. Start making it happen. Keep making it happen when normally unexpected chaos surrounds you.
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Dan Waldschmidt is an international business strategist, speaker, author, and extreme athlete. His consulting firm solves complex marketing and business strategy problems for savvy companies all over the world. Dow Jones calls his Edgy Conversations blog one of the top sales sites on the internet. He’s been profiled in Business Week, INC Magazine, BBC, Fox News, The Today Show, and Business Insider, has been the featured guest on dozens of radio programs, and has published hundreds of articles on progressive business strategy. He is author of the soon to be released Edgy Conversations: How Ordinary People Achieve Outrageous Success.