What Does It Mean When Your Plans Fall Through?
The honest answer: “Whatever you think it means.”
For the past six months my husband has been jumping through hoops, dotting the “I”s and crossing the “T”s of all the logistics and legal stuff to do a little moonlight work in Alaska. Although I wasn’t too fond of the thought of flying ten hours away from home, I booked our two tickets anyway. Things looked all good to go. I had done all the notifying and arranging of things on the farm and home so that everyone knew I’d be out of the loop for a solid week. We were prepped. Everyone else was prepped. Then a week before we should have been landing and my husband was supposed to be working in the great “Last Frontier”, it wasn’t going to work out(on the Alaska side). The work stuff is his story and not mine and they say things should be sorted out before his next scheduled work assignment. But the part of the story that I can claim as part of my own is “What now?”.
When things don’t work out as you planned you have a choice. If you’ve coached with me before you know that it’s our thoughts that ultimately give us the results in our lives. Think of all the different ways I could have thought about this situation… I could have thrown a fit from thinking they should have been more competent… I could have demanded reimbursement and refusal to even entertain any future plans with them from thinking they shouldn’t have wasted my time on all the things I put my energy into preparing for the trip in the first place…I could have been thankful from thinking that maybe it was divine intervention keeping us from some sort of harm…I could have figured that maybe I was supposed to stay home and work on the endless list of things that needed to be done from thinking I hadn’t earned any right to take time away when my farm is a wreck…I could have reacted in an infinite number of ways. But you know what I chose?
I chose to think of it as an opportunity. To do something big and fun. We already had plane tickets booked and time set aside. Let’s make the most of it. So I got back on the airline app, canceled our Alaska flights, and booked new flights to London. Why London? Because why not?! We have talked about traveling to Europe forever and always had a reason or excuse why we couldn’t/wouldn’t go. Was I nervous? Yep. Did I know what I was doing from experience? Nope. Did I have second thoughts? Absolutely. But you know what I did know? I could figure it out.
And figure it out I did. Just before we left I booked: a room, a personal tour guide that picked us up from the airport for a full day of London highlights, a Michael Bublé concert, a London Symphony Orchestra concert, and a concert of the legendary Elton John on his “Farewell Tour” that was rescheduled from four years ago. And after about four days of city life I was getting quite antsy for some time in the countryside. So I booked a coach tour that took us out to Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, and Bath.
Even if we didn’t have anything booked for activities, it would have been good enough. I am open to just going and figuring it out for the experience itself. I got way more out of that trip than the trip itself. I may write more on some of my lessons but here’s a few to give you an idea:
I can figure out how to do big new things. I hadn’t flown internationally before. I had put up a roadblock for myself when it came to international stuff. I thought there was more to it than having a passport and booking a trip. I don’t know why exactly. But I did. Granted, sometimes there is more to traveling internationally. But not for this trip to the UK for leisure.
London is a City. Yeah, that sounds ridiculous I know. But I assumed that since it was in England it wouldn’t be that much of a city right?:)
England’s time “springs forward” different than the U.S. I had checked the world clock on my phone to see what the time difference was between London and home and it was four hours. So I went about my planning and bookings. But when we landed it was five hours difference. Turns out we managed to go when they were “springing forward”. I had to do some adjustments being that I did keep my online appointments while traveling. Lesson learned for the future.
A Queue is a Line. As in “I stood in the queue for an hour to get my concert tickets.” And Tills are checkout areas/registers. As in “Walk to the tills and turn left for the exit.”
Cashless! Soooo many places do NOT take cash at all. I know this is all over and not just London. But we did run into a few situations where having cash saved the day. Even though I went through the motions with the bank of having our bank cards “coded” for the location we would be traveling to, we still ran into some issues. As an example; When we landed at the London airport we went ahead and used our cards to get English cash. The cards worked just fine using the ATM. But when we ordered our lunch during our tour the first day, the cards didn’t work. And remember, we were five hours ahead of home. So it’s not like we could call the bank and ask about the issue. Our tour guide ended up using her card and we gave her the cash. The cards did that several times during the week. The cards would work one day and then poof they would stop working. Each time we had an issue we just contacted our bank and eventually they were able to fix it totally. So on our last day we found a local tearoom and had an official afternoon tea(it was awesome by the way, Candella Tea Room) Just before the waiter was going to take our payment I mentioned how everyone around seemed not to take cash. He said that there are a few small places that still take cash like themselves and he wasn’t sure why most places didn’t take it anymore. Then when the waiter took our payment (contactless) guess what happened? It didn’t work. We were the second customer in a row that was having that issue. While it seemed as though it was probably an internet issue with their POS system…we still needed to pay for our afternoon tea. And when he asked if we had any other form of payment…yes sir, we have cash. He was more than happy to accept our cash payment. While the contactless payment is very convenient in a way, it’s still good to have a backup. On the homestead I’m always thinking of backups(example: the heat pump goes out during an ice storm, we can use the fireplace). Money is no different. To me the contactless method of payment still needs a backup. You could trade for chickens, eggs, goats, furniture, paintings, camels etc. But I think cash might be a bit simpler and a little less messy;)
The point I hope to get across is that we always have a choice in how to respond. My story is a bit of a grand example but it’s still a good example. The next time your plans (big or small) don’t go as you planned them to go…What if you thought of it as an opportunity? How could you make the most of the situation?
If you’ve ever had plans fall through and you made the most of the situation and it turned out better than the original, let me know in the comments below. I can always use more thoughts to keep tucked away for the next time my plans don’t go as they were supposed to.
