The summer between my college freshman and sophomore years I worked behind a customer service desk at a neighborhood bank. While there I learned a lot about interacting with clients, particularly over sensitive issues. Never mess with a person’s food, money or family was a popular refrain. My days were spent cashing savings bonds and selling travelers checks to the monied townsfolk who were going to vacation on distant shores.
Sometimes I escorted kind elderly women to their safe deposit box, inevitably nestled on the top row far above their heads. The long red boxes always weighted much more than I expected. I imagined they were storing gold bars and their better silver. These women seemed frail, but knowing they had faced decades of New England winters gave them a hearty stubbornness I always admired.
There were also long stretches of boredom, and I was grateful for my coworker behind the desk, a girl who had gone to the same high school as me though a year ahead. We filled the downtimes talking about nearly everything, and as summer began slipping away, we shared our excitement over returning to college. One day she asked what my plans for my future were.
“Well, I guess I’ll fall back on this if things don’t work out,” I quipped in the sarcastic way a Bostonian does.
Her reply and the expression that crossed her face instantly seared itself into my memory. She had winced, and she shook her head.
“Never have a backup plan. Commit and make it work. No matter what. When you make a backup plan, you’re telling yourself you don’t believe in you. That would be a disaster.”
My teenager mind drifted between wondering if she was flirting or merely offering friendly support. It was nice to have someone believing so strongly in me. Regardless, the wisdom of her words echoed through the years.
When I first considered going into business for myself, I sought advice from a friend of mine who had already hung out his shingle several years earlier.
“Burn the ships,” he said. “Every last one of them.”
It was a reference to Cortez and his alleged order to have his men destroy their ships so that they would have the motivation to conquer the countryside or be killed trying.
Every four to six months an old coworker and friend of mine share a coffee. We’ve known each other nearly twenty years and at our last outing he said, “For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve always had a Plan B to your writing. Now, you’re not old, but life is getting short. How about you focus on Plan A?”
Wow.
I have always had parallel thinking. Pursue two areas of interest and make a difference in the world where those areas overlap. The flaw in that philosophy is that parallel things do not overlap. I now classify things in Venn diagrams because it assumes some crossover.
Something happens along the road of life. You travel safer over time, take fewer chances, become unsure, or worse, so sure of the ways of the world. Then every so often, street signs and billboards capture your attention. You remember key phrases from your past and they play like a montage in a film before the start of Act III.
“Never have a backup plan. Commit and make it work. No matter what. When you make a backup plan, you’re telling yourself you don’t believe in you. That would be a disaster.”
“Burn the ships. Every last one of them.”
“You’ve always had a Plan B to your writing. Now, you’re not old, but life is getting short. How about you focus on Plan A?”
I guarantee you have something inside of you that you’ve been neglecting. Even if you love your career and have no regrets, there is an ardent desire you keep locked up and secret, or a once burning passion that has gathered dust. Your passions were not imagined to be locked up or ignored over your lifetime. With these extraordinary delicate things, fight the urge to plan around their failure. Instead, assume success is conspiring to get you. Take them out, polish them up and begin again.
A leader who ignores his or her inner light burns out much too soon and is no longer a beacon to guide others; they become the wreck that everyone avoids.
Rediscover your first plans and see if there is any heat left in them. Use all you have learned while they were laying latent and breathe life back into them. That is your calling. It will always leave a few messages, but it prefers to be answered.