Plans vs. Preferences

This will be the last essay for some time as I prepare to sign-off and give birth to my second child. There is so much I am doing differently with this baby, one of which is hiring a birthing coach—but not in the ways you probably think. My birthing coach will not be helping me with pain coping techniques or delivering my baby (that's what my doula and midwife are for). Instead, she has been helping me apply the lens of birthing and mothering to my business. To say I have had some incredible realizations is an understatement. I want to share one of them with you today.

Anyone who has ever had a baby, or been close to someone who has, probably knows the significance of having a birth plan. This is a 'to the T' rundown of how you would like your birth to go. Where it will be, who will be there, the medical interventions you are comfortable with and those you are not. It gets very detailed and expecting parents are known to grip hard onto their birth plans, desperately wanting to control the wild and uncontrollable experience that is birth.

Interestingly, this is not unlike plans we have in our businesses. I have seen so many people (and I have been one, too), clutch all too tightly to a business plan, an annual plan, or a project plan, in an effort to try and control the outcome. The result is almost always stress and a lack of flexability.

And if we have learned anything over the past year+ of a pandemic, it's that we need to be flexible in order to adapt in the most effective ways possible. Instead of resisting what is, if we allow it, then we can better control the one thing that is actually within our control, our response.

When my birthing coach mentioned the idea of having a preference instead of a fixed plan, the concept jumped out at me. Instead of gripping onto a plan of how things must go, a preference gets specific on your desires and intentions while allowing for unforeseen shifts.

A business preference instead of a business plan is more forgiving, it allows things to change (as they inevitably will), and it helps us be in the flow of what is actually happening, instead of being married to one set of expectations and trying to force what we want to happen.

A preference is something I'd like, but I'm not stuck on it. If it goes another way, I can bend with it, which will always mean a path of lesser resistance, and so a more enjoyable experience.

I wonder— where you might be clutching to a plan, when it might be easier and more effective to replace it with a preference?

As for these essays, I look forward to sending you an update from the other side of this experience, whenever it feels right and I have something helpful and inspiring to share.

Until then...

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