10 Quotes for When Life Doesn’t Go as Planned
We make plans to achieve the things we want in life. Sometimes the plans go off track and the unexpected happens. Life takes another direction we feel depressed or scared for what the future might hold.
These ten quotes remind us that a changed plan does not mean we have lost our way.
1. “It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.”
—Publilius Syrus
A plan should help us move forward, not keep us tied down.
2. “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
—Mary Shelley
Sudden change can leave us anywhere from off kilter to devastated. Take time to let yourself acclimate and evolve.
3. “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
—Viktor E. Frankl
When the situation cannot change, we still have choices about how we meet it.
4. “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
—Marcus Aurelius
The obstacle may change the route. It can also show us what the next step requires.
5. “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.”
—Maya Angelou
What happened can affect us without defining who we become.
6. “Experience was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
—Oscar Wilde
A mistake is not wasted if it helps us choose differently next time.
7. “When one door of happiness closes, another opens.”
—Helen Keller
We can mourn the closed door and still notice what has opened beside it.
8. “Things do not change; we change.”
—Henry David Thoreau
Sometimes the plan did not fail. We changed, and the old plan no longer fits who we are.
9. “The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.”
—Carl Rogers
A good life is not one where everything happens on schedule. We can keep finding our direction as we go.
10. “For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
—T. S. Eliot
We can give our full effort without controlling the result. Our part is the trying.
When life does not go as planned, the first feeling is often loss.
We lost the future we had already begun to imagine.
Give that loss space and take stock of where you are now.
The plan has changed.
The next step is still yours.