You plan everything.
You know what you’re doing tomorrow, what time you’re leaving, which train you’re taking, where you’re eating, and what you need to bring. You make lists for things most people probably don’t make lists for.
You’re tired of it.
So this weekend you decide not to plan anything.
Saturday morning comes.
Now what?
You make coffee and sit down. You pick up your phone, put it down, walk into the kitchen, then come back. You think about going somewhere, but you don’t know where. By noon you’re irritated and wondering why you can’t just enjoy having a free day.
By two o’clock, you’ve made a plan.
You feel better.
Planning may cost you something. You may spend too much time anticipating things that haven’t happened. Changing plans may be harder than it needs to be. You may miss things because they weren’t part of the plan.
But taking the planning away didn’t make you freer. It took away something you were using.
Maybe yours isn’t planning. Maybe you stay busy. Keep everything perfect. Avoid certain situations. Say yes before someone has a chance to be disappointed. Keep people at a distance because being alone is easier. Those things can cost you too. That doesn’t mean you can simply stop doing them.
If you want to change something you’ve relied on for years, don’t start by ripping it out. Find somewhere small to loosen it.
Leave Saturday afternoon open instead of the whole weekend. Let one unimportant thing be good enough. Say no where the consequences are small. Let someone a little closer without telling them everything.
If something is helping hold things together, you don’t have to pretend it isn’t just because you want your life to be different. Loosen it where you can.
Don’t pull it out from underneath yourself.