Can you succeed in life and fulfill your dreams without planning and having a good plan?
It is possible, but not most likely. Certainly there are people who go through their life based on their instincts only and eventually achieve great results. However, most of us need some kind of plan, a guide to where we want to be in the future. You have to know what you want in life if you really want to achieve and get it. Otherwise it's just a shot in the dark.
Why is planning important? where we're at to focus and set our sights on that, that's where we're going. This will be it breed called – Reticular Activating System. It's like a little filter in our brain that helps us focus on certain things.
What is the Reticular Activating System?
The Reticular Activation System (RAS) is a bundle of nerves located in your brainstem. And its job is to regulate behavioral arousal, awareness and motivation. This means that the RAS is able to determine what incoming information (stimulus) you are aware of, so that you are motivated to behave in a certain way.
But what does that mean? It's a "guard" that sits between your brain and your senses (seeing, hearing, touching, etc.), filtering what information gets through and what doesn't. Bet you didn't know that your brain doesn't process everything that's going on around you!
Why? It's a survival mechanism. At any given time, only a certain amount of information is really useful to your brain. For example, if a tiger is about to attack you, that's the only information your brain needs to push you into action – RUN for your life! It doesn't need to know what color the grass and flowers are, or what the air smells like, or what song is playing in the background – all of that is very irrelevant information at the time.
Your RAS is the part that analyzes what incoming information is really relevant to you (and your survival), letting only the most important things get through – it actively blocks the rest of the information (so you're not even aware of it).
It ensures that when you think of blue cars, you suddenly see blue cars everywhere. If you learn to focus on success with this tool, you will find opportunities everywhere and see success stories. We can use RAS to attract our goals. In this way, our subconscious will cooperate, find means and opportunities to achieve our goals.
Benefits of Planning and Goal Setting
- It gives you a purpose. If you have a worthy enough cause that you are willing to work hard for, then you are a person on a mission. You no longer go through life blindly – you know where you are going. You will not become depressed or desperate because of failures in life - you will get back up and keep going until you reach the finish line.
- It reduces stress. Planning events in advance can help you organize them better, prepare for potential challenges, and feel more confident that everything will run smoothly. If you do everything at the last minute, chances are you'll forget something or something else will go wrong.
- It will give you all the motivation you need. It can be a smaller or a bigger goal that you're striving for: it doesn't matter. They keep you going, even when you feel down.
- You know your priorities. A man (or a woman) with a plan knows their priorities. They know the importance and the concatenation of dots in the plans they have.
Finally about learning to plan
There are many good sides to planning in life. However, it does not mean that we should completely abandon the spontaneity of our lives and start living like robots from now on. Life isn't just about planning and executing the steps in those plans. We also need time to relax, rest and recharge our batteries. So on some days, even doing nothing at all is just okay!
But if you get enough rest and start thinking about goals you want to achieve, planning is a really good strategy. The advice here is: keep a broad, flexible plan in mind and fill in the details later. This way you can always adapt to new situations.
Sources including Health Articles (link), LifeXchange (link), madness (link), YourTango (link)
