I've always been a planner. Some might even say that I'm an "overplanner". Every little detail in my life tends to be planned. Before I go to bed at night, I plan out my next day. This helped me have fewer worries about the next day and helped me to stay organized. It was not until my senior year of high school that things started to not go as planned.
Your senior year is full of a lot of emotions and accomplishments, you get accepted to college, you have a list full of lasts, you also have a list of firsts, and you have one last year to make a mark. I went into my senior year with a wonderful group of friends and I could not wait to finish high school with a bang. However, what unfolded in the following months was nothing that was on my "plan".
For the first time in my life, I had to start living without a set plan. While everyone was making their big decisions and choosing which way their path would take them, my friends and I started to drift away. I started to focus more on school and I finished my secondary career with the best GPA I had ever had and I went into the summer with a much different mindset. Instead of my little plan of spending the summer away with my friends, I decided to take each day one at a time. Some would say that I just lowered my expectations for the summer but in all reality I just enjoyed what each and everyday offered to me. I had the best summer of my life.
There is one lesson from that year that I still remember everyday and it's this: it's okay when things don't go as planned. My first year of college brought a lot of changes to my life and to my plan. If you would have told me two years ago that I would be where I am right now; I would have laughed in your face and told you, "no way!" It's important for us all to remember that if things start to happen in your life and it was not what you had planned that we don't need to panic. Instead, we need to regroup ourselves and look at the opportunities that are being laid out in front of us. We need to allow ourselves to live. We need to live in the present and not worry about what might go wrong because honestly, the changes that were made in my life because I allowed myself to surrender my plan, are more than anything I could dream about. So much of the future is unknown so I try not to dwell on what might go wrong with my plan. I've developed a foundation on how I want my future to go but I've also left some room for change. From now on, instead of panicking when the plan doesn't go as you had hoped, I challenge you to run with what is given you and see what amazing opportunities it might bring to you!
