How many times in your life have you laid out plans for something really amazing just to have them flipped completely upside down at the very last minute? You lay out your strategy, you double check your work, make sure all your i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed and then life decides to come and rain on your parade. What do you do in these situations? What can you do?

While attempting a month trying to ‘experience something new‘ everyday I’ve run into this situation quite a lot and as hard as I try to make sure I’ve got every little detail planned to execute an epic experience somehow life just seems to get in the way and without warning I’m left scrambling at the last minute to come up with a hail-mary plan B.

As frustrating and challenging of an experience these situations have been I can’t help but think about the interesting parallels these struggles present to real life. If there’s one thing I’ve learned along my journey it’s that life is chaos and as much as you might think at times you have a good hold on the roller-coaster, within an instance life will bank left and you’ll be left flailing and disoriented. So how then do you attempt to control an uncontrollable force such as life? How can you plan for the unexpected and the unthinkable? Well…you can’t.

I know that concept probably sends 30 percent of you reeling for your organizational safety blankets but the reality is life doesn’t care about your plans and it will inevitably and unavoidably come to throw you off course. The strategy should never be to try and control the chaos of life, the goal should always be to find a way to make the best of the situation you are given.

Be proactive with your Plan B’s

When I plan something it’s always with the idea that that plan is only a best case scenario. That doesn’t mean I don’t try to organize my main plan as much as I can but on the off chance that I’m calling an audible I need to know ahead of time what a plan B could potentially look like. Admittedly my plan B’s sometimes don’t start formulating until hours before the deadline but if you’re getting the feeling like something could go awry start hustling immediately, don’t leave it to chance.

Earlier this month I had this exact situation. I planned to try hydrofoiling on an ‘air chair’ (apparently it’s like tubing but strapped to a chair instead of a tube and skimming 3ish feet out of the water…crazy right!?) with someone I had never met before. When Friday rolled around I discovered that not only had the weather changed for the worse but my new friend with the boat was for some reason no longer returning my emails. I figured things were going pretty south for my day of lake adventure so I decided to bail out and go to plan B.

I thought a nice easy alternative would be to go ‘donate blood‘ so I set out across town on my bike to the blood clinic. Unfortunately and depressingly I discovered when I got there that the clinic wasn’t even open on Fridays and that I was now stranded on the far end of town at mid afternoon again with nothing new to accomplish for that day.

“Necessity is the mother of invention”

When I was younger my father used to tell me this quote as he scrambled to find a way to open his beer without a bottle opener. I never imagined it would actually have a real application to my life. Funny enough while standing on the steps of the blood donor clinic as it started to rain this was the very thing that came into my mind. I had a problem and there was only one way I could solve it. Get inventive, get creative.

I remembered a suggestion someone had made to me the other day that CrossFit would be a fun challenge to try. This wasn’t on my list and was definitely way outside my normal workout routine but unfortunately I didn’t know anyone who did CrossFit or who could hook me up with an introduction at a gym. At this point though I was running low on time and options so I jumped on my phone and started dialing gyms. After 3 different gyms and no luck booking something last minute I was starting to get a little worried. Finally I got a hold of the manager at ‘Okanagan CrossFit.’

I’m fairly certain I more than startled her as I launched into a desperate rant about experiencing something new, my blog challenge and my urgent need to become a CrossFiter as soon as possible but thankfully she was kind enough to invite me to a class she was hosting later that evening and I was able to not only check off my new experience but I ended up finding an amazing community of motivated and supportive people to connect with.

Be brave, be open, and go with the flow

Sometimes these types of setbacks will leave you feeling stuck or overwhelmed like there’s no escape from the unfortunate place you’ve found yourself. The reality though is that there are new opportunities around every corner, and even though they may not be the exact destination we originally set out on, if we are open to the change instead of fighting against it sometimes you can end up discovering something even more rewarding. The best example of this I actually learned last week while hanging 100 ft in the air off the side of a cliff.

Keep moving or stay stuck

I was experiencing rocking climbing for the first time and had become stuck half way up on my first climb. I was clinging on for dear life and I couldn’t find a new handhold or crevasse above me anywhere to pull myself up to the next stage of the cliff. After 2 or 3 minutes of desperate searching my palms began to sweat and my body began to tense up. I was stuck… Just then my friend who was belaying me from below shouted up to me. “Keep moving your feet! Something will open up.” he said. Reluctantly I did as he instructed. I looked down and saw a different foothold and reached my right foot into it. As I moved I looked up and low and behold I noticed a ridge in the rock that I didn’t see before. I grabbed it with my right hand and pulled myself up the cliff side. By just shifting my feet that small amount my whole perception changed and opportunities to move forward presented themselves.

I think these are great analogies for facing life’s problems. Sometimes things don’t go the way we planned, sometimes we’re stuck in what seems like an inescapable trap but if we can focus on being proactive, if we can be brave and are willing to embrace whatever changes come our way and when all else fails if we can remember to just keep our feet moving, then everything should work out in the end.