Over the past week or so, I've been talking with a lot of people (mostly college students) about the future. Now I know I've already covered the subject of not worrying about the "FUTURE" in recent articles, but this is a bit different.
We all know that college is meant to prepare you for your future careers and even relationships. What we all seem to believe, though, is that college will prepare us perfectly for every situation that we may come across in life. But unfortunately, we learn quickly–once we're in college–that this isn't true. We're told through all of our years in school that we have to have a plan for our future–which is a very important aspect of life. However, in the real world, sometimes a plan that you create in your head may not work.
But that's okay! Sometimes it's better to not have a solid plan, but rather, have a few strong ideas instead (almost like a plan A, B, C, and D)–because if you find yourself locking in on one specific plan for your life and it doesn't wind up happening, you're going to feel lost in the end. Since you didn't think of taking a different route to your end goal, you may not even see that route as a possibility. Keeping an open mind to any opportunity, though, may wind up helping you in the long run, if your initial plan doesn't work out the way it was supposed to.
And I'm not saying that "anything you set your mind to isn't going to work." That's not the case at all! In fact, if you are driven, passionate, and a diligent worker, odds are, you will get what you're after. It very well could work out for you without any issues! But if it so happens that your plan doesn't work as you expected, at least you know that you'll have another way around any obstacle that may be in your way, through the power of an open mind.
When you take everything as it comes without a dead-set plan of action in mind, you can be open to so many opportunities that you may not even know existed. I'm not saying to just drift through life, though. In fact, I encourage you to have some type of plan–just remember to keep an eye out for multiple ways to execute it. Don't turn down other opportunities because it's not the exact route that you pictured yourself taking in order to achieve your goal. You never know, it may help you even more than you could've imagined in the end. Life is pretty unpredictable, anyway.