Chapter 8

The Art of Plan B

My mother always told me to plan ahead for emergencies. And while I never gave much thought about it, I did heed her advice and made back-up plans for things like college and even my social life. Good thing, since my life is very different than what I’d expected. —Aggie, age 18

No matter how strong your confidence and pride in your abilities becomes, life will still throw its fair share of curveballs your way. That’s where having a Plan B (or C, D, and E) comes in handy. When you get derailed on your journey toward your unique voice and your dreams, which may happen periodically, you have a couple of choices—give up or forge a new path. Being prepared and remaining flexible in your thinking helps give you a chance to develop a new plan when the situation calls for it.

This chapter will focus on remaining flexible, adapting to new situations, and learning to take constructive criticism without letting it demoralize you.

Let’s start with another scenario to get the ball rolling.

What Would You Do?

You’ve always had one dream in life—to dance! You want to join the New York City Ballet and perform. You started talking ballet classes at the age of 2, practicing hours every day. Now that you are in high school, you’ve convinced your parents to let you pursue your dream, starting with an audition with the Joffrey Ballet School. You’ve practiced and worked very hard preparing for the big day. You just know you’ll get in and the journey toward your dream of dancing in New York will come true.

Until …

The day before you are to leave for the audition, you tear your MCL while practicing. The pain is excruciating. Worse, the doctors and your parents have all told you that you can’t audition. You are devastated. Every hope, every dream was riding on this audition. And now, you have no idea when you will be able to move to New York to dance.

What do you do? Let your knee heal and try to audition later in the season? Try a different school? Come up with another plan for dancing? Cry for days?

Take a moment and write down what you would do if this happened to you.

What Is a Plan B?

As the scenario pointed out, life doesn’t always cooperate with our plans. Things can happen to prevent us from moving in a direction we choose—sometimes due to things we can control, and often due to things we cannot control. Regardless of how we get off track, having an alternative plan (or two) enables a few things to happen.

First, the development of an alternative plan will help ease your stress as you take the journey toward your dreams. No longer in an all-or-nothing situation, having alternative plans enables you to enjoy the journey a bit more and go with the flow of life, without trying to bend life to your will.

Alternative plans also teach the valuable skill of adaptability—by going through the process of making a secondary or tertiary plan, you acknowledge the reality that things may not always happen the way you anticipate, but that doesn’t mean you can’t achieve what you’ve set out to do. You simply need to be willing to try another route, a new map.

Work through Worksheet #11 and begin to come up with alternative paths to achieve your goals.

The Girl Guide

Worksheet #11: Planning for Plan B

Directions: List your goals from Worksheet #2 and two possible ways to achieve each one.

Goal	Plan A	Plan B
School Goal #1 Pass my math final	– Study for 15 minutes a night – Redo any problems on the quiz I got wrong – Ask my teacher for help if I get confused	– Form a study group – Attend the extra study sessions at school
School Goal #1
School Goal #2
Personal Goal #1
Personal Goal #2
Long-Term Goal #1
Long-Term Goal #2

As you begin to practice finding all of the different ways to get from point A to point B, I want you to complete Activity #13, A Storybook Ending.

The Girl Guide Activity #13

A Storybook Ending

Directions: Pick one (or all) of the following activities to help you see how not everything has a perfect, storybook ending.

1.  Using one of your favorite fairy tales, rewrite it from an object’s point of view. For example, rewrite the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears from the point of view of the little bear’s chair. How did the story change? How did your understanding of the story change?

2.  Rewrite the ending of a well-known story or your favorite book, creating a newscast to tell what happens differently to the characters (try videotaping this or making a podcast). Did this activity change your perspective of the story and its characters?

3.  Try to find three or four stories, movies, or TV shows that are retellings of popular stories from alternative perspectives. What did those shows teach you about the story? Consider blogging about how retellings of popular stories in media today helps you change your perspective of your goals and dreams.

Overcoming Obstacles

In addition to teaching you flexibility, learning to think about alternative options toward a common goal can also help provide a foundation for overcoming whatever obstacles may come your way.

Handling adversity is more than just pushing through the hard stuff. It is also about staying open and flexible to opportunities that present themselves to you. Helen Keller was a great example of this. She often spoke of remaining open to all of life’s journeys. As a woman who overcame some pretty intense obstacles, I think she was on to something.

Life does present its challenges. But every time we are successful in something, even the tiniest of things, we are afforded an opportunity to take what we’ve learned and build on it. That is why it is so important to celebrate your little victories, so that you can begin to see the skills you are acquiring and apply them to new situations.

Using the accomplishment journal and skill bank you developed in Chapter 7, take a moment to use some of your previous accomplishments and the skills you learned from them to create a road map toward your dreams in Activity #14.

The Girl Guide Activity #14

A Map for Life

Directions: Use the ideas that follow to help you make a road map for your life.

1  Using your journal, list some of the goals, accomplishments, and skills you have acquired based on what you’ve written for the previous worksheets.

2  Using that information, draw a road map that takes you from where you are toward your dreams identified in your dream poster.

3  Label the parts of the journey with the skills you will need to get there.

4  Color in the page and decorate it with things that remind you both of your journey and your skills.

5  Redraw your map anytime you feel like you are losing your way.

Another part of overcoming obstacles involves being able to listen to your parents and friends when they offer advice and constructive criticism. Yes, I know, it is very hard to hear criticism, even when it is meant to help. Oftentimes, you may only hear the negative aspects of what is being said, instead of hearing all of the positives and the advice being offered. You may get “stuck” in your opinion, unable to see all of the alternative paths you can take toward your destination. Or you may just be feeling attacked and want to respond in kind.

Regardless of why taking constructive criticism is difficult for you, being willing to listen to advice and opposing points of view is an important aspect of becoming flexible and adapting to different situations.

Tool #5

Staying Open to Ideas

  Remain quiet and focus on the person speaking.

  Try to listen with your eyes and your ears.

  Don’t react to things that you may not like.

  Try to find one new idea you can try.

  Don’t personalize the advice. Constructive criticism is about helping, not hurting.

Note To Self: Reach for the Stars

Follow your dreams. Ignore the voices of those who would tell you to play it safe, to take the easy route, to not aim for the stars in case you fall. Instead, dust yourself off and try again. Embrace your heritage—the strong, capable, independent, and fierce women who also aimed for the stars and who, when they fell, got up, dusted themselves off, and tried again. —Rebekah Graham

Being adaptable and willing to alter your plans when needed are skills that can keep you on the journey toward your dreams. Like the old adage says, life really is a journey—one filled with good and bad, ups and downs, happiness and sorrow. This is a given. How you deal with the adversity and the skills you develop in the process—those are the things that will shape your outcome.

The next section refocuses our attention back toward perspective and optimism, building on some of the previously learned skills. But first, take a moment to reflect on your own adaptability skills.

My Voice

Keeping in mind the authentic you inside, answer the following:

  Do you believe in developing back-up plans for life? Why or why not?

  How do you feel when someone tries to give you constructive criticism? Is it hard for you to listen to the feedback? Does your mind wander as you try to think of all of the ways the feedback doesn’t apply to you? How can you prevent that from happening?

  Do you think it is important to be flexible in life? Why or why not?