361 You Don't Need a New Plan

Over the past three weeks, we've spent time asking some important questions, like, is the life you're building still the life you want? What are you carrying that no longer belongs in this season? And where is your energy actually going? And my hope is that through these conversations you've gained something many people never allow themselves to receive, and that is moments of self-awareness, because that awareness can change everything.

You can't change what you refuse to acknowledge.

You can't really heal what you refuse to notice, and you can't realign a life that you never stop long enough to evaluate.

As I thought about how to close this series, I kept coming back to a pattern I see over and over again.

Each year around the middle of the year, people begin looking for new plans.

They want the new strategy for the continuation of their year.

Maybe the first half hasn't turned out exactly the way that you wanted, so now you set new goals and you have a new productivity tool or a new system that you're gonna put into place.

And while there is nothing wrong with goals, I think many of us are solving the wrong problem, because the issue is rarely a lack of information.

Most of us already know what we need to do.

We know that we need better boundaries and that we need more rest, or that we need to move our bodies or to spend time with the people we love separate from times with our screens.

We need to make space in our lives for God or for healthier habits.

So the challenge isn't information.

The challenge is often the implementation of that information, and implementation becomes difficult when you're exhausted.

I often think about this as a physician.

Imagine someone comes into the office and tells me they're exhausted all the time.

They can't focus or maybe they just have no energy.

They're struggling to make it through the day.

Now imagine I respond by handing them a more complicated schedule, a bigger to-do list, or more demanding plan.

That wouldn't make any sense because before we discuss performance, we must first discuss their capacity.

Before we look at the output, we have to discuss what reserves and resources are available to go into the solution.

Yet that's where a lot of times we go with ourselves.

We're exhausted, and then we solve the exhaustion by pulling in a solution that's requiring us to demand even more, push even harder, and ultimately become more overwhelmed.

And then we wonder why nothing changes.