The Nature of Planning

For many years, my clients and students have described how they will be doing something like driving, or taking a walk or watching a video and simultaneously doing what they call planning. Sadly, what they are doing is not planning at all. It is more akin to anxiety or anticipation and worry or overthinking.

Planning in truth is something wholly different. Planning, for example, is a focused activity with one or more individuals mapping out future steps.

To clarify, this is distinct from the wanderings of the mind that can often be associated with imagination. Those thoughts will largely come and go and are not tethered to plans and/or the formulation of a set path forward. The distinction is centered around whether the thoughts are an intended distraction from the activity at hand or simply are allowed to flow through your mind. In this way we also begin to let go of the belief that our thoughts define us. If we hold them loosely or not at all they increasingly reveal their nature as passing clouds of the mind.

How then do we let go of faux planning? We begin by gently catching ourselves each time we recognize our minds planning future moments. Asking ourselves…Am I planning or am I allowing the mind to wander? If it has specificity and we are guiding the thoughts, it's faux planning. Let it go. If our mind is wandering, let it do its thing without attaching to it. Gently let it fly by. This is how we effectively quiet our mind. By giving ourselves space to be restful by either consciously letting it go or by allowing a thought to fly by.

- Vignette from the book Language of the Soul: A Path of Simplicity by Martin Perkins