Embracing Plan B: Finding Beauty in Life’s Detours
Resilience in redirects
Life doesn’t always go as planned. But that doesn’t mean you won’t reach your goals. It just means you might have to take a different route to get there.
Everything happens for a reason, and that reason is yet to be discovered. Years later, when you look back, it will all make sense why you had to go on a different path, why your plan had to be delayed, and why you had to go through all the obstacles you’re experiencing now.
1. Plan B Is Much Better Than Plan A
Sometimes we think that the plan we have in our head is the best one. Yet, life shows us that there could be other, equally beautiful paths. The key is to remain open-minded and look for opportunities, especially in times of change, struggle, and emptiness.
When nothing is certain, anything is possible. Instead of dwelling on disappointment, shift your focus to what you can do next. Craft a new plan and look for opportunities that could arise on this new path.
You hold the power. The key is to know that you’re unstoppable and possess unique values that others don’t.
Tip: Next time your Plan A falls apart, take a moment to write down three possible ‘Plan Bs’. This simple exercise opens your mind to new possibilities and starts a positive thought process towards adapting to change.
2. Your Characters Have to Be Built Before You Can Be Ready for the Prize
Often, it’s the unexpected twists and turns that shape us the most. Like a river carving its way through rock, our struggles shape and mold us, revealing our true potential.
Your struggles are not setbacks; they’re stepping stones. Each challenge is an opportunity to grow, to learn, and to become stronger. They’re your greatest gifts, offering lessons that ease and comfort never could. In adversity, we find resilience. In challenges, we discover our strength. In pain, we find empathy.
We don’t build mental strength, patience, acceptance, tolerance, flexibility, willpower - or anything mentally - overnight. We have to go through certain experiences and events repeatedly until those muscles are trained and become deeply embedded in our subconscious minds.
Your struggles are your character builder. They create your depth. They make you unique and unstoppable. One day, you’ll look back at the struggles you’ve faced with a sense of gratitude. You’ll see how they’ve led you to where you are, how they’ve shaped the person you’ve become. Without them, you wouldn’t have reached the depths of your character or the heights of your achievements.
Tip: Create a 'Struggle Journal’. Every time you face a challenge, jot it down and reflect on what it taught you about resilience, patience, or empathy. Over time, you’ll see a pattern of growth that you might have missed.
3. Blessings Are Hidden Along the Way
A lot of the time, rejections are blessings in disguise. Without disappointment, you wouldn’t have embarked on a different path. Without it, you wouldn’t have learned to let go of the life you planned to embrace the new life that awaits.
Blessings don’t always come as wish-fulfillments but as richness in life experiences and connections with others. They often appear in the form of new relationships, unexpected opportunities, and deeper self-awareness.
Tip: Practice gratitude during setbacks. Every evening, list three things you’re grateful for, even on bad days. This habit helps in recognizing the blessings hidden in everyday challenges.
4. Embrace the Journey of Self-Discovery
Every detour in life is an opportunity for self-discovery. As you navigate through the uncharted territories of your Plan B, you embark on a journey of self-exploration. You learn more about your resilience, your adaptability, and your capacity for change.
This journey isn’t just about reaching a destination; it’s about discovering who you are along the way. It’s about finding joy in the process and learning to appreciate each moment, even the challenging ones.
Tip: Set aside time each week for self-reflection. Ask yourself questions like, “What have I learned about myself recently?” or “How have my recent experiences changed my perspective?” Document these insights to track your personal growth journey.
5. The Power of Perspective
How we view our circumstances plays a crucial role in how we experience them. Viewing struggles as opportunities for growth transforms them from obstacles into stepping stones. This shift in perspective is powerful and can turn the most challenging situations into valuable life lessons.
Embracing a positive mindset doesn’t mean ignoring the difficulties. It means acknowledging them and choosing to focus on the growth and possibilities they bring.
Tip: Whenever you face a problem, challenge yourself to list at least two positive outcomes or lessons from it. This reframing technique gradually shifts your perspective from seeing problems as obstacles to viewing them as opportunities.
Conclusion
In the end, life’s unpredictability is not a hindrance but a gift. It pushes us out of our comfort zones, challenges us to grow, and leads us to discover paths we never knew existed. Your journey, with all its twists and turns, is a beautiful tapestry woven from your experiences, lessons, and growth.
Remember, life doesn’t always go as planned, and that’s not just okay; it’s often exactly what we need.
It was my 35th birthday yesterday and I thought about what I was grateful for.
When I made the list, surprisingly, I wasn’t focusing on what I have. Instead, I focused on what I lack: I’m grateful for the lack of many things in my life.
A friend made a great point that we often think about what we’re grateful for in terms of what we’re grateful for having. But what are we grateful for lacking? The lack of something can be wonderful but we often forget to pay attention to and be appreciate what we don’t have.
For example, this year, I am truly grateful for my parents’ lack of diseases and illnesses.
I am grateful for not having any sickness and for not having any wrinkles yet. 😆
I am grateful for the lack of drama or arguments in my life right now. I am grateful for the lack of jealousy and envy within my friendship group. I am grateful for the lack of dishonesty. I am grateful for the lack of personal debts.
What about you? What are you grateful for not having? What are you glad you lack?
What do you want to continue lacking?
Why are you grateful for these lacks?
How are these lacks important for your being and your soul?
After a long-winded conversation with my friends on Saturday about different personality traits - not only in terms of dating but also within family dynamics, I was reminded of this fact again after having long-winded conversations with my parents (separately as they are divorced).
Sometimes a conversation with parents has a way of making a detour to visit issues, conflicts, and misunderstandings that happened during childhood. The discussion started off light-hearted but somehow ended with me (or maybe both of us) having to close our phones or else we would just keep filling our heads with thoughts that stir up unpleasant feelings.
Then I was reminded again that this is not how to communicate with my mother. I cannot communicate with my mother who is emotionally driven like how I would communicate with my father who is logically driven. Suddenly, I shifted the way I communicated and I received the response I wanted from my mother.
When communicating with my dad who is driven by logic, I have to use facts, reasons, and numbers to prove my point and get his support. When I use my emotions such as stating how I feel, how others feel, begging, or pleading, he would walk away feeling frustrated not knowing how to respond to the display of emotions. From his point of view, I start acting “irrational".
On the other hand, when I use the same approach - using facts, logic, and reasons - to communicate with my mother, she feels that I don’t understand and don’t care about how she feels. And when people feel that you don’t care about how they feel, they can get defensive. So they may start saying things they don’t actually mean, but it’s actually a way for them to communicate their hurt.
_____
Being 34 today, I have learned and grown so much as a person. I have learned to reflect and become mindful and aware of how I communicate with different people. After all, communication is a two-way street. It is not enough to understand how you communicate and process information. You have to understand how the other person communicates, receives, and processes information because what you think you are interpreting might be received completely differently.
The same way goes with how two siblings might feel completely differently about their parents’ parenting styles even though they grow up with the same parents in the same household. This is due to differences in personality traits and communication styles. One sibling may love being encouraged to grow their independence and self-reliance, while the other may feel abandoned and unloved.
_____
Why did I bring this up today? I just wanted to spread awareness because I believe this topic is important and we all should be aware of it.
Mismatch in communication styles can create many unresolved conflicts between people - close friends, siblings, couples, family members, and even colleagues! Only when you learn to recognize and be aware of not only your own communication style, but also others’ communication styles that you can create deeper bonds and heal from childhood traumas caused by differences.
It is important to remember that at the end of the day, we all want love, acceptance, and understanding from the people we love and care about. No one wants to create conflicts. No one wants to argue and fight. Understanding these differences and learning to adjust and adapt can save you a lot of heartache and headache. After all, we cannot change, adjust, or adapt our communication style overnight - it requires a lot of practice and patience. So, start now so that when you meet people with different communication styles, it becomes easier to adjust, adapt, and create bonds with fewer conflicts.
I wish you the best of luck on your human journey.
1. Our past/childhood gets carried over into adulthood.
Whether you realize it or not, things that were said to us when we were little that affected us deeply continue to affect us as adults.
At some point in your life when you’re little, you may have been told you’re not good enough, not smart enough, or not pretty enough. Whether it was intentional or not - by parents, teachers, friends, or a random stranger - the feeling you felt when you were told that you’re not good enough never truly fades away. It’s been embed deep in your subconscious mind for years after. This hurt feeling gets carried over into your adulthood and affects how you live your life. You may find yourself not feeling confident to do certain things and you don’t understand why. You may find yourself working so hard and never feel truly satisfied no matter how much you achieve.
This can become an exhausting, never-ending cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy.
If, as a child, you had to work so hard to get love and acceptance from parents, you subconsciously felt that the love was “conditional”. You have to be a high achiever, or else, you’re not worthy of love. This doesn’t only affect your personal life where you find yourself constantly working. But in your romantic relationships, you also find yourself subconsciously drawn to romantic partners who make you feel loved the way your parents made you feel loved. You will be drawn to romantic partners who validate you for “being good enough” the way you had to get love and acceptance from your parents. This is because it feels familiar.
Until you understand this and work on rewiring your beliefs around this, you will continue to be attracted to the same type of people and relationships that may not be healthy for you in the long run. You may find yourself being attracted to people with the same childhood traumas. You may find yourself being attracted to people who treat you as well or as badly as your parents did or as your parents treated one another.
___________________
2. It is important for one to have the freedom to explore, find, and become their most authentic self in order to find their happiness.
If you grew up with parents who are similar to you and are more relaxed and chilled, you may not have struggled with this. However, if you were, different from your parents and the majority of people in your society, then you may have felt like a “misfit”.
Being a misfit is not easy. As a child, we all want love and acceptance from our parents more than anything else. As a teenager, we all want acceptance from our friends. If you’re a misfit, you may have struggled with feeling like you’re not good enough and that your parents wouldn’t love you unless you become who they want you to be. You couldn’t be your authentic self. The love was “conditional”. You never felt truly accepted. You felt like you’re weird and your parents wanted you to be who they thought you should be. And they probably wanted the best for you. However, their dreams and insecurities are not yours to bear. But since we usually live with our parents for the first 18 years of our lives, we cannot escape the fact that their thoughts, beliefs, values, and patterns affect who we are.
Unfortunately, for most of us, unless we have done a lot of personal development work and become aware of our subconscious thoughts, feelings, and actions, we tend to subconsciously pass on our fears and insecurities to those closest to us.
This can be exhausting as you may have followed the path you thought was right for you - only to never feel truly fulfilled. You follow other people’s dreams, but not yours. You’re not being completely yourself.
I truly believe that we can only find our true happiness when we can fully accept ourselves and love ourselves unconditionally. And sometimes, we just have to accept that we can never truly accept ourselves until we accept the fact that our parents are the way they are, and other people are the way they are, and we cannot change them. The only thing we can control is ourselves and what we do, act, and feel.
___________________
3. We can change our patterns and beliefs.
When you grow up in a household with negative energy and limiting beliefs where parents have negative ways of thinking and limiting beliefs, such as, believing that money is evil; life is unfair; or having the tendency to focus on the possibility of negative outcomes, you subconsciously adopt those beliefs and ways of thinking from you parents. They become your thought patterns and you live your life through those lens.
Once you recognize these patterns of yours and the fact that you can never see the world and circumstances in life differently until you change them, then you can begin to work on changing them and find your happiness. After all, happiness is a state of mind. It lies in the way you look at things.
___________________
4. The end of happiness is the lost of gratitude
Following the previous point, you can focus on what you have and feel happy, or, focus on what you lack and feel unhappy - the choice is yours.
And if, by default, you tend to focus on what you lack because you grow up with someone who kept talking about what they lacked in life, you need to work hard to change these patterns. You can start by starting a gratitude journal. It will feel weird at first to force yourself to think about what you’re grateful for. It will feel repetitive to have to do this every day. However, repetition is the key to making any thought become deeply embed in your subconscious mind and become a belief. Every time you think a new thought or take a new action, your brain fires a new synapse. Each time you think the same sort of thought or take the same action, that same path gets repeated and becomes stronger. You need to practice the new way of thinking over and over until the new way of thinking becomes stronger than the old way of thinking.
Happiness can, after all, be easily ignited through the practices of gratitude. And the more grateful and positive you feel, the more beauty you will see in life and the more positive people you will attract into your life. We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are. There are millions of things happening around us every day. We can only see things which match what lies in our subconscious mind. So nurture your subconscious thoughts and beliefs. They are the control panel of our heart, mind, and soul.
Whether you’re in a relationship, single, or in a complicated situation, I think we can all agree that working on our relationship is really working on ourselves.
There’s no other place as intimately challenging as being in a relationship. A relationship is where can heal all of our intimacy, commitment, and abandonment wounds and fears - if we allow ourselves to confront our deepest fears and greatest vulnerabilities. Many of us choose to run. But there comes a point when we’re mature enough to realize that running away doesn’t make anything better. Running away might seem like the right thing to do in the moment, but it doesn’t make us feel fulfilled. We still feel hollow because we run away from our deepest need - our need to be loved.
But we all have our hearts to protect. Is this person going to let me in if I let them in? How do I know they are not going to leave if I let them in and know the true me? Will they love me for who I really am? Will they accept my flaws?
Past stories keep repeating in our head. Fears and insecurities arise, not just from previous relationships but also from our upbringing - how we received love from parents.
Here are what I believe we should all do to be better at love.
1. Understand yourself. How did you receive love as a child?
The fear we fear happening to us in our romantic relationship is often the result of how we were treated and loved as children. This is subconscious. Most of us don’t realize why we keep repeating this pattern. We repeat the pattern because it’s familiar. But just because something is familiar, it doesn’t mean that it’s good for us.
An example:
If your mother was tough and strict on you - you had to get good grades at school and succeed in career in order for her to show love, affection, and pride in having you as her child - you naturally would subconsciously be drawn to people who appreciate and admire you for your success. And if you feel like you’re not doing well, you may withdraw from them because when you were little, your mother did not show you strong affection unless you did well at school. You had to earn her love through your success. You are repeating the same pattern in your romantic relationships.
Another example:
If you had a father who was physically and emotionally absent because he was busy with work, you may grow up feeling that that behavior from a man is acceptable. So you may subconsciously be drawn to men who are physically and emotionally absent, but provide financial stability for you like your father did. You might repeat this pattern until you start doing some inner work and realize that this pattern of dating has not made you fulfilled and that you need to be with a man who can be physically and emotionally present with you.
No relationship is perfect since no one is perfect. Neither are our parents. But as we get older, we can acknowledge what we want for our children. And if we want our children to grow up in a healthy, loving home, we must, first and foremost, heal our wounds.
_________________
2. Understand yourself. Who are you?
Understanding yourself is the first step to having a successful relationship. Understanding who you are helps you weed out people who would not be compatible with you.
While differences create opportunities for learning, vast differences can create annoyance, conflicts, misunderstandings, miscommunications, and disagreements. All of these could lead to unhappiness. When the honeymoon phase ends, who wants to compromise?By understanding yourself better, you avoid wasting time and energy with people who are not a great fit.
Do you understand your own lifestyle? How do you like to spend your time? What are your habits?
What are your likes and dislikes? What are your pet peeves and red flags?
How do you view the world? Are you liberal or conservative? Are you religious?
What are your core values? Do you share the same moral standard?
_________________
3. Understand yourself. What are your goals?
One top reason I see people with compatible personality traits and lifestyles break up after a few years together is having different life goals.
Do you know what you want out of life? Sometimes our goals change as we get older. That’s why it is wise to get married when you know for sure who you really are and what you want out of life. But even then, your goals may still change and your partner’s goals might not align with yours anymore.
What are your life goals? Do you want to have children? Do you want to live in a big city or in a suburb? Where do you want to live? Do you want the same things in life?
“Loving is not just looking at each other, it’s looking in the same direction.”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
4. Understand yourself. What do you want in a romantic partner?
Do you know what you want in a romantic partner?
What qualities do you want in a partner?
What traits do you admire?
Here’s the catch:
Sometimes the traits we admire in others are the traits we have & love about ourselves, or, the traits we want to have but don’t have as much of yet.
Once we shift the focus from finding these traits in a partner to growing this trait within ourselves, our need to find it in a partner will diminish. It diminishes because we have fulfilled it within ourselves. There is no need to find it elsewhere.
If you know yourself well enough, you’d know what traits you lack. These traits you lack can exist in a partner who can come in to complement you. However, these exact same complementary traits can also annoy you in some way.
Here are some examples:
If you’re a very organized and systematic person, you might find that a partner who is flexible and spontaneous helps you loosen up and find more joy in life. At the same time, their flexibility and spontaneity might also annoy you from time to time.
If you’re quite wishy-washy and live in the moment, you might find stability from being with someone plans ahead and is more grounded. At the same time, conflicts might arise as you might be annoyed with their planning-ahead mantra. They might be annoyed with your inability to plan and stick to plans.
If you’re logical, you might like how an emotional partner helps you get in touch with your emotional self. However, sometimes you might find them too sensitive and take things too personally when you’re just being blunt or direct. This could create misunderstandings and require you both to work out the differences in communication.
If you want to date someone who is strong and dominant, you have to realize that they would always want to take the lead and would not be happy if you take the lead in relationships which include earning more or making more important decisions.
If you want a more passive, sensitive partner who lets you take the lead in relationships, you have to realize that they would not be that dominant man who argues with someone for you or treats you like a little princess.
A person who is very empathetic and sensitive would naturally always put other people’s needs before themselves. While this is a good trait, it could be negative because they don’t prioritize their own needs.
Every strength comes with its weakness. That same weakness can be seen as a strength. It depends on how you look at it. Nonetheless, both cannot exist in the same person with the same level of intensity. One will always be stronger than the other. So you have to decide what you want, what makes you happiest, and what weakness you can accept.
_________________
5. Communicate Better
One of the downfalls I see in many relationships comes down to communication.
A) Miscommunication
I believe that as we get older, we all must get better at communicating. I know I am now a lot more expressive verbally than I was when I was younger. People are not mind readers. The only way to communicate how we feel and what we want is by verbalizing it. But there’s an art to it - which leads to the next point.
B) Ways of communication
We should express how we feel and how a situation or someone’s action makes us feel. However, no one likes to feel criticized or blamed. From my research, study, and observation of successful couples, people who are able to sustain happy long-term relationships know how to communicate. They do not yell or scold at their partner when angry. They do not rage. They do not swear. They do not stonewall.
One common scenario is this:
You tell your partner how a situation or their action makes you feel. But they get defensive! When someone is defensive, they stop listening to you and hear what you have to say. So you don’t feel listened to. Your needs don’t get met. This might become an unhealthy pattern in a relationship.
People who win in relationships know how to communicate their needs in a way that does not make their partners feel criticized or blamed. This is an art we all need to master. Several dating books provide great advice on this.
Also, there are couples who both like to yell and scold at one another when angry. And it works out for them. And if you look at how they’re brought up, you probably see that they both grew up in similar kinds of households where parents communicated that way. So they are used to and subconsciously adopted that way of communication.
The problem arises when two people have different ways of communicating.
One person might want to take quiet space and withdraw; the other person might want to talk it out right away.
One person might grow up with parents who communicate calmly and have learned to communicate calmly. The other person might grow up with a parent who is verbally abusive. Therefore, they either adopt that same way of communication (as a way to respond to that said parent), or, they might become the opposite which is shy and withdraw.
Understanding your partner’s preferred way of communication help eliminate misunderstandings. When you understand how your partner copes with distress emotions, you can give them what they need. If your partner needs space, you can learn to give space. If your partner needs more communication after an argument, you can learn to be more verbal and not withdraw.
Changing how we like to communicate and dealing with our distress emotions is not easy. But a relationship can only be successful if both partners learn each other’s way of communication and adapt. It will get easier over time.
Tip:
If you find it hard to give your partner space as you are the type who needs to “talk it out” after an argument but don’t want to overwhelm your partner who needs some time alone to process things, create “Voice Notes” on the Happiness Planner app. Talk it out as much as you can on there. When your partner is ready, you can listen back to your voice notes, so that you know what exactly you felt like saying in the heat of the moment. Oftentimes, you will find that once you calm down, you no longer want to say what you thought you wanted to say when you’re upset/angry/frustrated. This Voice Notes feature can save you from having regrets over the things you say. So many relationships fall apart because of the mean things people say when they’re angry.
6. Have more empathy & kindness
This one doesn’t need much further explanation. A relationship can only last if both people care about one another and are kind and generous with one another.
When people are not empathetic and are not kind, it is often a shield. They created this shield since they’re little to protect themselves from the cruel world, from the narcissistic parents, or from the people who abandoned and hurt them over and over. Unfortunately, sometimes the person doesn’t want to break that shied. And there’s really nothing we can do if the person is not ready and is not willing to work through their intimacy issues.
__
May you all find the love you seek. And if you still struggle with feeling worthy of love, you must first focus on your own self-love and self-acceptance. One day, you will find someone who accepts your flaws and quirks just the way you do.