After mapping out a decade-plus life plan with a friend, the speaker realized it felt overwhelming and unrealistic. Instead, they focus on what's achievable tomorrow, next week, or in a few months. Baby steps toward your ideal self reduce anxiety and work better than exhaustive long-term planning.
Chapters
Anyone else ever plan their entire life out in one conversation and then feel completely overwhelmed? Yeah, me too. So I was on this call with my long-distance best friend recently. We were talking about finally meeting up. We had plans for this fall, but now there are some conflicts and we're not sure if it's happening. Then we just spiraled into this whole conversation about our futures. I literally mapped out my entire life: graduating 2027 after doing an 8-month internship, traveling the world while creating content, moving to New Zealand, meeting the perfect guy there, starting a family, settling down, working at some corporate job, and then eventually quitting to start my own business. I could have gone on forever about this dream life I've created in my head, but we both stopped and asked ourselves, what's the point of talking about all these future plans when things are obviously going to change? Like, I might not even move to New Zealand. I could end up somewhere completely different than where I'm picturing myself right now. So we realized, instead of looking years and years ahead, why not focus on tomorrow, or next week, or okay, maybe a few months ahead at most? What do I want to accomplish tomorrow? What are my plans for the summer? Where do I want to work next? Taking these baby steps and focusing on what you can actually do right now to become closer to the person of your dreams, that's so much more achievable. It's less overwhelming. And guess what? You'll still end up with the life you want. Just maybe not exactly the one you planned out in that 2-hour call with your bestie.
