Don’t Plan Your Life Away

Questioner: I am planning my life and I get so lost in my plans but things are still not happening the way I want them to. What do I do?

Sadhguru: A plan is something that is in your mind. But you can only work with what is in your hands. How much time you dedicate to planning and how much time for work is something each individual has to decide depending upon the nature of his life. If you are part of the planning commission, you are only planning – that’s your job. Executing it is someone else’s job. Whatever the nature of your work, the nature of life is such that you can only eat now, you can only breathe now, you can only live now. Planning too, you can only do now. You can plan about tomorrow but you cannot plan tomorrow.

Should Life Go According To A Plan?

A plan is just an idea, and all our plans come from what we already know. Our plan is an improved version of the past. A plan is like us taking a piece of the past and applying make-up on it. This is a very poor way to live. Yes, we need to have a plan, but if your life goes according to your plan, it means you have lived a very poor life. Your life should happen in a way that you could not imagine.

The possibility of life is so vast that no one can ever plan to that extent. Keep a plan as a fallback, but let life happen. Explore the possibilities of life as it is now. You never know what will open up. Something that has never happened till now to any human being may happen to you. But if your life goes according to your plan, only the same nonsense that has happened in this world till now will happen to you. Nothing new will ever happen to you because a plan comes from what you already know, from the information and experience of the past.

You must know to what extent to plan. If you don’t have a plan at all, you may not know what to do tomorrow. It is a certain balance and wisdom about life as to what to plan and what to live by abandon. For most people their plan is not coming from some great vision. Their plan is essentially coming out of your fear of not being able to face the unexpected. The only misery that human beings have is that their life is not happening the way they think it should happen. In the morning, you wanted your coffee but the coffee didn’t happen, so you are miserable. But a glorious sunrise is happening, and you are missing it. Just that one stupid plan that you have is not happening, but something much bigger is happening.

In this cosmic scape and in the dance of life that is happening around you, your plan is such a small thing. Don’t give so much importance to your plan. Yes, you need a plan to know what to do tomorrow morning but don’t ever expect your life to go by the plan. Above all, always dream that your life will happen way beyond your plan, your imagination, and all your expectations.