The Planned Life
“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”
- Joseph Campbell
The life that is waiting for you, as Campbell describes, is your authentic life. You might find certain aspects of your “planned life” within your authentic life but rarely is your planned life your true authentic life.
Your planned life is influenced by others—your parents, other family members, teachers, the education system, mentors, and society’s “rules”. As you grew up and began to think about what type of career you wanted, where you might want to live, whom you might want in a partner, and other important details you’ve incorporated into your life you only knew what you were exposed to at that point of your life and with that information you began to plan out the life you believed you were supposed to live.
Living the planned life you’ve created is not necessarily a bad thing—for some individuals it is. There are many happy, successful, and fulfilled people living the life they planned out earlier in their life. I don’t know this to be true, but I would be foolish to believe that for many, their planned life became their authentic life.
But, for others, the planned life is restricting and holding them back from their “best”, “rich”, or “ideal” life aka their authentic life. If your planned life is restricting you or feels forced, you probably already know it—you feel it. You feel called to do something different or maybe just feel like there is something more meant for you but you aren’t sure what it is—you just know the current life isn’t “it”.
Follow those feelings.
Explore those feelings.
Experiment with those feelings.
Letting go of a planned life will look different for everyone. For some, it will be a gradual transition, and for others, it will be immediate.
Letting go of a planned life might be as simple as being more aware of, willing, and open to accept what the Universe brings to you in the future—if you commit to being open, you’ll know when new relationships, opportunities, or interests are meant to be pursued.
Letting go of a planned life will be intimidating—you’ll be undoing plans you’ve made and have been following for years. You might even have family members and friends telling you that you’re making a mistake, and they will mean well and be coming from a place of love but that doesn’t mean they are right.
Letting go of a planned life will require new planning. Ironically, once you let go of your planned life and began to accept the life waiting for you, your authentic life, you’ll need to start planning once again—there will be new plans to be made in order to support your new life and those plans will be adjusted as you evolve along with your authentic life.
Pursuing the life waiting for you is not as simple as Joseph Campbell makes it seem with this quote, but for anyone stuck in a life they’ve planned that knows there is more out there for them, letting go of the attachment to their planned life is the first step in allowing the life that awaits them to reveal itself.
See you tomorrow and keep pursuing,
JC