Do You Have a Plan B?

October 23, 2023 | ChangingCourse.com

For the past couple of years, I’ve been coaching with a guy named Bo Eason. Unless you’re old enough to remember the Houston Oilers NFL team, you probably don’t know that he played for them before suffering a career-ending injury. He went on to develop and perform in a one-man play called Runt of the Litter. Now he teaches Personal Story Power – how to use your story to be the best at what you do.

Bo wrote a book called “There’s No Plan B for Your “A” Game.” It’s really based on his story of wanting to play pro football since the age of 9 and having mapped out a strategy to do just that. He focused on nothing else, despite setbacks and obstacles that most of us would have seen as the end of the dream.

But what happens if you never had a Plan A? Or if, like Bo, your Plan A ended due to circumstances out of your control.

Plan B doesn’t have to be a backup plan that keeps you from focusing fully on Plan A. And maybe the better name for it is Plan A Take 2 rather than Plan B.

Did you know that the average American has seven careers over their lifetime? This was news to me when I heard it many years ago. I was raised at the end of the era where you went to work for a company and stayed there for life, getting promotions maybe, but always within the same organization. I was pretty stunned when I found out that not only had people been changing jobs more often, but also that they changed entirely what they were doing for a living. That’s a lot of Plan A’s!!

If you’ve been laid off or otherwise separated from your dream Plan A, or the dream morphed into something that was approaching nightmare, or your life has changed dramatically for other reasons – illness/injury, death of a loved one, or other life-shaking events that have made you question some of the choices you’ve made or how to create a path forward – it’s time for a new plan.

It’s also okay to just want something different. It doesn’t have to be bad for you to change direction. The tug of new adventure could be calling you too.

Certain events and times in our lives are invitations for re-evaluation. What was your dream when you were younger might have changed, especially since so much has changed in the world since then.  Opportunities exist today that we couldn’t possibly have dreamed of even 10 years ago, much less when we were in middle or high school.

I believe that endings are the Universe giving us a nudge to something bigger. What is that for you?

If you’re adrift and unable to answer that question, keep us in mind, we’d like to help.

We’re opening up “Outside the Job Box” career consultations again, something we both learned as coaches many years ago but haven’t done since we took over Changing Course. We’ve heard feedback that makes us think there’s a desire for it. We haven’t yet had a page set up on the website to offer it to you, but if you’re interested, drop us an email at info@changingcourse.com with the subject line ‘OJB consult” and we’ll get you all the details.