You know me, I’m a planner.

I order, organize, and schedule everything I possibly can. If it isn’t nailed down, I’ll nail it down, doggone it. If I encounter anything up in the air, I won’t relax until it’s on the calendar with itemized to-dos, cross-referenced with all associated ventures, along with a check-list for communications with every stakeholder.

To some people, this sounds like neurosis. Those people aren’t entirely wrong. Still, I prefer to think of it like impeccability — basic responsibility, reliability, and respect.

It usually serves me pretty well. Very rarely do I forget to do something that I said I’d do. I never have to apologizing for “spacing it.” I don’t let down those who are counting on me (I can barely stomach the thought). My obsessive attention to detail helps me to sustain relationships even when I’m busy and distracted by other things. Because I’m meticulous and organized, I feel pretty confident taking on commitments that are bigger and more complicated than I really know how to do.

AND…

What I learn again and again is that all of this management and coordination is really just preparation to be flexible, to be adaptable. I will plan and prepare for weeks or months — only to have to let those plans go, in the end. When the actual moment arrives and it turns out that something completely different is called for, I have to be willing to go with that flow instead.

Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

While I’d rather not compare my life to a war, this does sound about right. The Bhagavad-Gita uses the same battlefield metaphor for all of human existence. And I think it does speak to one of life’s fundamental balancing acts — the balance of strength with flexibility.

Anxiety aside, I think that most of my planning and preparation is really about strength — feeling strong. Feeling capable and reliable. “I got this! You can count on me!” I will make committed choices and take decisive actions. I’ll be a bold “Yes!,” even if I’m not sure how it’s going to go. That can be pretty darned powerful.

But it’s not so hot if it means always being like a tank ramming through walls and over obstacles. Bulldozing alone doesn’t usually prove very effective in terms of achieving my desired outcomes. Strength without flexibility becomes rigid, antagonistic, and stuck.

Then again, neither is flexibility, on its own, real productive. While it’s great to be accommodating and adaptable, without decision and action, ain’t nothing gonna happen.

So what works for me is to plan, plan, plan — decide, decide, decide — and then be willing to pivot as necessary, on a dime. To listen, learn, and change, even if that means that my best-laid schemes go completely awry. Probably, especially when it means that.

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They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It means that an idea or vision without actualization can drift into chaos, or worse. “Faith without works is dead.” True enough.

But I’m wondering about this aphorism in the context of our New Thought practices around intention-setting, the power of thoughts and beliefs, our creative minds…

While the first take still holds — prayers without process don’t go far — I think there might also be something in here about strength and flexibility.

Because strong intentions can certainly take us all sorts of places, not just to damnable ones. Everything on purpose does start with an intention; nothing wrong with good intentions. They only become a problem when we find ourselves on some highway to hell and still stubbornly refuse to change course.

Actually, it can be a great thing when our plans-intentions-prayers take us into brand new territories.  Maybe we should hope for this, welcome this:  situations that require something completely different from what we were expecting, the development of fresh capacities.  Breakthrough experiences — beyond what we already thought we knew, beyond what we were able to envision before. 

It only feels like suffering and torment (for ourselves and for everyone around us) if we’re dead-set on plan A when life is already three steps ahead, trying to bring us through plans B to Z.  

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I’m writing this on a Tuesday, which is not at all what I’d planned.  I wasn’t even ready to decide on a topic yet, to say nothing about scribbling out a blog.  But it’s a busy week and the Labor Day holiday threw everything off.   So, ready or not, here we are!

I don’t expect that on the fly will ever be my preferred way of doing things.  But it’s kind of liberating to be reminded that I can maneuver thusly, when I need to.  Really, if I didn’t flex this week, something was going to break.  So I’m going to practice being as bendy as I can possibly be, and I invite you to bend with me.

I can’t wait to see you this Sunday, September 13, 10:00am at q-Staff Theatre. With the divine Patty Stephens. XO, Drew

©2026 Drew Groves