I’m about a month and a half away from what I hope will be a successful “official” launch of the Without Being Crushed website. Needless to say, I’m a bit nervous.
But I always get like that when I start making plans.
I really should know better by now.
One of the worst things I ever tried to do while pursuing any of my crushes was to try to plan out how an interaction would go. I’d get myself all worked up over everything that could go wrong and, sometimes more so, over things that could possibly go right. Half the time that prevented me from doing anything–I was just too worn out!
The other half of the time I learned pretty solidly that no matter how thoroughly you plan, it never goes quite like you’ve rehearsed.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t try to be prepared for how things may go. On the contrary, being aware of contingencies is one of the best things you can do in business or in relationships. What you can’t do is get so attached to a certain pattern that you freeze up when you deviate from it.
Most of life is improvisation. If you’re going to go all in, you have to be comfortable working without a script. You have to know yourself well enough to switch gears quickly to keep up with what reality throws at you. Knowing what may go on helps with that. Being able to adapt comes from a willingness to learn.
Whenever I got myself stuck on what the script was going to be for a conversation, I stood a good chance of freezing up when the other person didn’t deliver her line quite the way I had planned. Once I got over my expectations for what the responses would be, it got a little easier to follow through on my initial plans. Not always to the letter, but at least to an end.
Over the next month and a half, I expect to do a lot of improv here. Past that official launch date, I expect things to get a bit chaotic. I hope to be surprised (in a good way) on how I ride those waves and on what they bring in with them.
Regardless of how it goes, it’ll be learning experience–just like every last one of my crushes.
