126: What to Do When Things Don't Go According to Plan

Apr 2

In this episode, I answer my own question - what do we do when things don’t go according to plan? After a disappointing couple of week’s I found myself needing a reminder about how to pivot when faced with feeling lost and feelings of heartbreak, disappointment, and just like nothing would go my way. I discuss the challenges of suppressed memories, how to pivot after a creative “failure”, not being where I want to be, and how to find the gifts in the tough chapters of life. I also discuss self-doubt and how self-doubt can feel crippling, but you can trust yourself.

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Timestamps ⏱️

Introduction: 0:05
Listener Question: 3:19
Outro: 28:28

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Amanda Durocher [00:03:20]:
Alright, you guys. I wrote myself a question. It's a little dramatic, but this is how I'm feeling. So here we go. Dear wise Amanda, I'll be honest. I'm feeling lost and filled with self doubt. Since the beginning of the month, nothing has gone according to plan. I had so much hope for this year, and I feel like the wind has been taken out of my sails.
Amanda Durocher [00:03:42]:
I've had difficult memories come up to process. One of my new podcasts feels like an utter failure, and I'm just not where I thought I would be. I know that's a feeling I suffer from a lot, but nothing seems to be going according to plan. I find myself feeling disappointed, and I could use some advice on how to start fresh rather than continuing to wallow in self pity. Love, the Amanda lost in the woods. Thank you, self, for this question. This is a very honest question. And my first piece of advice would be, are you being kind to yourself? Are you offering yourself the compassion you so easily offer everyone else? Are you being empathetic with yourself? Because it has been a hard month.
Amanda Durocher [00:04:23]:
Let's honor that. It has been a difficult month. There has been a lot of unexpected change and a lot of disappointment. And I know that disappointment is one of the most difficult feelings for me to feel, and it's hard. Let's just take a moment to honor that disappointment feels hard. It does. It's not supposed to feel easy. I think some of these feelings that are really difficult to feel are difficult because they want our attention.
Amanda Durocher [00:04:50]:
And when you feel disappointed, it is an invitation for you to dive deeper into how maybe something was out of alignment in your life. Let's start with feeling disappointed with repressed memories coming up. That is something I dealt with this month when I was in Dallas. I went to Dallas for a couple days, which is really funny because when I travel, it actually tends to be when my repressed and suppressed memories come to the surface. I think it's because my body gets relaxed. And when I'm relaxed and I don't have my usual coping strategies, things are able to come up to be looked at. So I went to Dallas. I expected to have a great time.
Amanda Durocher [00:05:27]:
I did have a great time. I'm gonna be honest about that too. I did have a great time, but I had this suppressed memory come up. So the difference between repressed and suppressed memories, I talked about in episode one twenty five with Kelly Schooner. But repressed memories are that you completely unconsciously bury something. You have no recollection of it. A suppressed memory is that you do have some conscious awareness is what I've found because I had no idea the difference between repressed and suppressed memories until this suppressed memory came up. And it was a sexual trauma memory, and I'll share more about that in next week's episode.
Amanda Durocher [00:05:59]:
I'm gonna talk about sexual assault next week. So I'll save all that good stuff for that. But I wanna offer myself something here because that was hard. That was so hard. It is so hard when these memories come up. It is so hard when we have trauma we have to process, when we're whacked with a trigger, when a new realization about ourselves comes to the surface that is something we've buried or haven't wanted to look at. It's difficult. It's why it's called the inner work.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:25]:
It is work. It's hard work. It's amazing work. So is most work. When you find what you love to do, it is work. Like, me sitting down and writing daily is work. Me doing this podcast is work. Me doing self care and me going to the gym, all of that is hard work.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:40]:
It's rewarding. I love it. Learning to play the piano. I'm looking at my piano right now. I'm gonna be honest with you guys. I have not played the piano this month. I'm gonna make that April's goal. Anyway, these things are work.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:50]:
And sometimes, we're allowed to have all our feelings about how hard these things are, especially when you live here in America, where for some reason, we have all developed a belief recently that things are supposed to be easy. I don't know if it's Amazon's fault. I don't know if it's social media. I don't know if it's just the culture we live in. I don't know what it is. But life's not supposed to be easy. Life's challenging. Isn't that what makes it fun? Isn't that what makes anything fun? The challenge.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:17]:
If we were given everything overnight, I mean, how boring. How boring. And so I say this because with this difficult memory that came to the surface. Yes. That was so hard. But when I reflect on that, the truth is with that memory coming up, what a gift. If I am to humble myself right now, what a gift. Because I had been asking myself since the beginning of the year, why do I still feel so unworthy? Where is this deep unworthiness rooted in? And there was a deep unworthiness rooted in this memory, this memory of horrible things happening to me.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:54]:
We'll just put it that way today. And that was hard. But, also, it had a gift in it. And this unworthiness tied to this that this thing that happened to me made me unworthy was going to live in me and live in my body until I looked at it. And so though it was very challenging to have this come forward, it was a blessing. Because now I look at that memory, and there is not an emotional charge in this moment. It doesn't mean all the layers have come up. I accept that.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:26]:
More have come up since I was in Dallas. Right? I had the original memory come up, and then bits and pieces have come since about what actually happened. And it's very difficult to process, but it's also freeing. That's what it is. It's liberating. And, no, was that part of my plan to have more sexual trauma to process? That will never be a part of the plan. It doesn't mean it won't happen for me, but that will never be, like, on my docket of things to do. I'm never gonna, like, put that at, like, the beginning of twenty twenty five or the beginning of the year to do list.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:58]:
Process more memories you don't remember. It's just not gonna be who I am. I'm hopeful. I'm always hopeful that we're done. And healing is an onion. Healing is peeling back the layers. We don't have to be done. Life is a journey.
Amanda Durocher [00:09:10]:
There is no direct path. That is so true. When things don't go according to plan, we often feel disappointment. We can feel a lot of other feelings. And then it's a reminder that nothing is guaranteed. I thought I was gonna go to Dallas, have this great time, come back, feel refreshed. Instead, I came back, and I had a lot of healing work to do. And that was okay.
Amanda Durocher [00:09:32]:
I also got to see my growth through this experience. I got to see that I had people in my life who I could reach out to and say, hey. I could use a compassionate ear. I had this hard thing come up. I had people in my life at this point who don't doubt me, who I knew were safe people to disclose to, And that made this memory coming up so much easier than any other memory I've ever processed because I had safe people to reach out to. And that's new for me, and that's growth. That's something I got to see by this thing that did not happen according to plan. What a gift.
Amanda Durocher [00:10:03]:
And the other thing I wanna say when things don't go according to plan is that I think life has a funny way of reminding us that we are not in control of it. We so often as humans want to control life. We wanna control our life. We wanna control the people in our life. We want everything to feel in control because when we feel in control, we feel safe. But the truth is we are not in control. Life is in control. Life isn't supposed to be predictable.
Amanda Durocher [00:10:32]:
Life isn't supposed to be easy. Life is life. And I found that the more I embrace life because one of my goals for, like, the past year has been, like, how can I feel more and more alive? And the more I can feel alive is by letting go of that control and allowing things to go off script, which is so often not according to plan. So the next thing I wanted to touch on was the podcast I mentioned as an utter failure. I don't know about anybody else, but when a creative project doesn't work out the way we want it to, it hurts. It hurts when things don't work out the way we want. I had recently started a podcast with a friend about the realities of healing from rape. That podcast did not work out.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:17]:
I took it off the Internet, and I mentioned that here in case there's anybody who was listening to it and looking for it. Unfortunately, it did not work out for various reasons. I don't even have to go into them, but it didn't work out, and I was devastated. I was absolutely devastated. And even writing my question today, I labeled myself an utter failure, and I can't help but laugh a little bit at how dramatic that feels. Because I don't believe putting ourselves out there is ever a failure. I believe the only way we fail is when we don't do what we want to do. This podcast I started, I really wanted to try it.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:52]:
I wanted to give it a try. It didn't work out. Almost a success because I at least tried. Because the truth is with any podcast or any creative writing I do or poem or song I write, I'm only in control of showing up to it and allowing creativity to flow through me. I am not in control of who listens to what I do. I am not in control of how you take what I say. I am not in control of one person, a hundred people, a thousand people engaging with anything I do. I'm not in control of that.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:20]:
I have zero control over that. Yes. You can do marketing. You can do this or that. But at the end of the day, that's not my job. That's where I have to put a little trust into life and where I can't fail in my belief if I show up to what my heart is asking me to do. If I show up to what I feel called to do, that's a success. And I tried a new project where I was creating with somebody, and I couldn't control that person.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:45]:
That person and I were not on the same page. That's okay. Doesn't mean it was a failure. I I gotta try something new. And the truth is it not working out is, again, a blessing in disguise because I have taken the last week to reflect on it, and it wasn't working. It wasn't working for many reasons, and I couldn't see that because I was so caught in the plan I had for myself. I was like, this is a part of the plan. And life was like, well, it's not.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:10]:
This isn't aligned. This isn't working for you, so it didn't work out. Doesn't have to be personal. Doesn't have to be labeled a failure. It didn't work out. You know? And I think that that's part of what can be hard when things don't go according to plan, as I mentioned in the intro, is the judgments we put on ourselves. Like me labeling myself an utter failure or, oh my god, can I even trust myself? That one has come out for me over and over again. Can I even trust myself if this didn't work out? Yes, Amanda.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:35]:
You can trust yourself. You can trust yourself. So it didn't work out. What did you learn from it? Did you grow? Did you try something new? And did you pivot when it wasn't working well? Yes. That's all a win in my book. So I share that because I think, for anybody creative out there, it can be really hard when our creative projects don't work out the way we want them to. So many times, we put such high expectations on our creativity, and I believe creativity is this gift from a higher power. Sorry.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:03]:
That is my belief. I believe it's that connection to something greater than myself. And that spark, that life force does not want me to control it. It wants to come through me and show me something. It's a gift for me first, anything I create, and then it's a joy if it gets to help anybody else. But what I find with creativity is that it's a gift we get to create. We don't get to be in control of how that gift shows up in the world and how it is taken by others and how it works and how long it stays. That was the lesson with this one.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:38]:
That podcast wasn't meant to last forever. We recorded, like, six episodes, and, honestly, I think that suppressed memory I mentioned a little bit ago, I think one of the conversations we had helped to, like, dig that up within me, honestly. And so what a gift. The podcast wasn't what I expected it to be. That's okay. Doesn't have to be personal. Now that leads me into not being where I thought I would be. And that's true.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:59]:
I'm not. I thought I would have a bunch of podcasts out, a bunch of new podcasts. I was gonna start another one too. Honestly, I mentioned that because what I learned is I bit off more than I could chew. If I'm honest with myself, I was not feeling like myself in the month of March. I was frazzled and stressed. And I kept telling myself, it was fine. It was fine.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:18]:
It was fine. It wasn't fine. That's not how I function. That's not how my creativity flows. I don't flow from a frustrated place. I flow from a pretty relaxed state. And I told myself I needed to create all these new things so that I could be this new idea I had. And I was trying to, like, build this whole new idea overnight rather than understanding that things happen over time and that things may not go according to plan.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:43]:
Things didn't go according to plan, and that's okay. But I invite you and me to reframe not being where you should be to maybe being exactly where you should be. Because how exciting that we sometimes aren't where we thought we should be because we were never meant to be there. Or maybe that wasn't what was best for us. Or maybe that wasn't aligned with our true intention. Like I mentioned at the beginning of the year, I wanted to feel worthy. And the truth is with some of these things that have happened this month, I was aligning with an old version of myself who didn't feel worthy of support, who didn't feel worthy of love, who didn't feel worthy of deep friendships, who didn't feel worthy of empathy. Like, these old parts of myself were showing themselves.
Amanda Durocher [00:16:25]:
And this month has helped me to realign with what I desire, which is to feel worthy every day. Worthy of love, worthy of support, worthy of my creativity, worthy of the life I enjoy, worthy of joy. And sometimes the idea of what we think will give us that isn't actually what will give us that. Because, also, if we haven't had something before so say I haven't really, like, walked through the world feeling entirely worthy every day of my life, which I have not. But say I haven't done that, and then I don't truthfully know what it will take and require for me to do that. I have to trust that life will show me what that looks like. And I can take steps in alignment with what I think it is, or life may have me take some steps that don't work out the way I think. It's like taking the actions every day and kinda letting go of the future outcomes of what that means.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:18]:
That's what I find again and again with my life. I'm humbled all the time. Life is a humbling journey. Anybody else out there? Life humble you on a regular basis? Anytime I fall into arrogance. Life knocks me off my ass. It's amazing. It's amazing because truthfully, arrogance, I think, is a big problem in today's society, especially in America. A lot of arrogance being thrown around.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:39]:
A lot of people very arrogant. There's a lot of arrogance, and it's worrisome. I honestly see it as a downfall for the culture that I currently live in. But, anyway, so sometimes we're humbled. And that's what I think happens when things don't go according to plan. Evan always says we gotta eat our humble pie. Evan's a huge New England Patriots fan. And Bill Belichick used to say something about humble pie.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:00]:
I'm butchering it. I don't remember it. Anyways, this is years ago when the New England Patriots were good, and Bill Belichick would talk about humble pie. Being humble, though. But the truth is because when the Patriots were doing really well and, like, winning all their games, you still have to be humble because it's not guaranteed your next win. You have to show up and do the hard work every day. It's not like overnight, all of a sudden, you're successful. You never have to work again.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:22]:
It's like humility is important because nothing's guaranteed, and we have to continue to work for our desires and work for who we wanna be. You know? For me, it always comes back to my inner world. I try so hard to focus on the external, but time and time again, I'm humbled that those external goals do not fulfill me if I am not fulfilled inside. And that is why things sometimes don't go according to plan so that we can remember what's truly important and how we can align with the truth of who we are. So the last thing I wanna talk about before I wrap up this episode is I wanna touch on the self doubt because self doubt is something I have really struggled with my entire life. But this month when things haven't gone according to plan, what it triggers within me is this self doubt. And I find self doubt can be debilitating. It can be paralyzing.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:09]:
Self doubt is crippling is how I feel about it. And to anyone out there who also struggles with self doubt, first, I wanna say I'm so sorry because it's challenging. And I believe everybody struggles with self doubt to some extent, doubting ourselves. But if you really, really struggle with self doubt like I have, I mean, it is just painful. It's painful to think we can't trust ourselves. It's painful to continually question ourselves, our motives, and our way of being, and the action steps we take. And I find when things don't go according to plan, it can trigger self doubt because I personally, and I think a lot of people listen to this podcast, follow the directions of my heart. I follow my inner guidance.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:50]:
I follow what I believe is true for me. And And when things don't go the way I think they should, it causes me to doubt myself, and then it causes me to, like, question my reality and question so much. And the message I feel about this is just stop. Stop questioning yourself. Stop doubting yourself. You can trust yourself. You know what's true for you. And if you don't, I invite you to begin really exploring what that feels like because we live in a world that is getting more and more divisive, more and more hateful, more and more confusing to navigate.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:24]:
There are a lot of mixed messages out there. There are a lot of people who are gonna try to tell you what's best for you. They do not know what's best for you. Only you know what's best for you. I have paid enough people money to tell me what's good for me to know that nobody but me knows what's best for me. I have listened to the wrong people enough times to know that only I know what's best for me. But, oh my gosh, what responsibility we bear for our own lives when we are the ones who know what's best for you. And it doesn't mean we can't go to people for help and we can't ask people for guidance and things like that.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:00]:
Of course, we can. But so often, those people who we ask for guidance are just reaffirming to us our own truth. And And I wanna invite you every time you doubt yourself to ask yourself and to dive deep into what part of you is really doubting yourself. Because for me, when I doubt myself so often, it goes back to a childhood wound. It goes back to that inner child work. It goes back to reassuring myself to a part of myself that was told she should not trust herself and was told she was wrong when she was right. And I don't really believe in right or wrong, but there were moments in my life that I think we all have experienced where we have seen wrong actions being done or people have convinced us of something that we knew wasn't true or wasn't true for us or didn't feel right for us. And it's not about judging other people.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:47]:
It's not about being right and righteous and arrogant. It's not about any of that. It's just when we're navigating the world, sometimes we're just gonna know what's true for us and what isn't. And we want to begin to follow that with all our heart. And when things don't go according to plan, it does not mean you need to doubt yourself. It just means pivot. It just means you get to try a new direction, a new path. So life is filled with lots of different pathways.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:13]:
It's not linear. It was never meant to be linear. It'd be boring if it was linear. And life is gonna throw us curve balls. But that doesn't mean you have to doubt you. You deserve to have your back. You deserve to be your biggest cheerleader, your best friend, the parent you always deserve cheering you on. If you need somebody cheer you on today, I'm cheering you on.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:34]:
Heck, yeah. If you're listening to yourself, you're listening to your guidance, you're doing the hard work, hell, yeah. I know how hard it was for me to get here, so I know how hard it was for you to get here too. And I share all this about self doubt because self doubt is, gosh, I listen to people be in doubt about themselves all day, and I just wish everybody remembered how freaking awesome they were. And that if sometimes we make mistakes, it's not like the end of the world. Like, my podcast not working out. Not the end of the world. This memory coming up, I got to see how I could navigate that in a new way.
Amanda Durocher [00:23:06]:
That's awesome. That's amazing. It didn't feel amazing in the moment, I'll tell you that, but what came up had already happened. It was a horrible truth of my life that I had suppressed. It had already happened to me. So I could continue to deny it, or I could bring that part of me home and accept it into who I am and the truth of my story. And I could love that part of me and know that none of that was my fault. And that's the same for you with these moments throughout your life that may cause you self doubt and the way people have maybe treated you or spoken to you.
Amanda Durocher [00:23:39]:
You know, in my life being bullied has really contributed to self doubt. This fear of abandonment. This, like, can I trust myself because when I thought I did in the past, I feel like I lost friends and things like that? It's just debilitating at times because I can be so overcome with fear. But the older I get, the more wise I become, I guess. I view fear as just an invitation into dancing with life a little bit more. The more we overcome our fears, the more free we become, the more we feel connected to ourselves, and the more we connect back to the truth of who we are, and the more that we can just flow with life rather than resist or control life or be paralyzed by that fear and self doubt. And the more we show up and do and we overcome those fears, we realize that self doubt may always arise, but that it's not something that has to debilitate us or control us. And the more we show up in the world and the more we do things, the more we build that self esteem, that self respect, and we're able to remind ourselves of all the amazing things we've done and overcome and the amazing qualities of who we are.
Amanda Durocher [00:24:41]:
And then we're able to kinda talk ourselves off that self doubt ledge. But for anybody out there who needs this, because I think I need this today, I want you to know that your heart is guiding you on the intention you set for your life. And if you haven't set an intention for your life, I invite you to reflect on that. My intention is always to feel free in this lifetime. The traumas I experienced in my past left me feeling like I was locked in a cage. I write poems on poems of the feeling of domestication and what that felt like in my life because of trauma and truthfully also as a woman in this lifetime and growing up in a wealthy environment. I'm not gonna lie. It left me feeling freaking domesticated, and I share that because when things don't work out and don't go according to plan, I remind myself of the intention I set for my life, and I can see how those things that didn't go according to plan oftentimes weren't aligned with my intention of freedom, and then I can thank it.
Amanda Durocher [00:25:36]:
And, yes, so many hard feelings, lots of journaling, lots of meditation, lots of time in nature, a lot of step back from work, reevaluating, a lot of moments of introspection and slowing down. When things don't go according to plan, it's also an invitation to slow down. We live in a fast paced society, stress, stress, stress. Sometimes things don't go according to plan so that we can stop what we're doing, take our foot off the gas, and look at life in a new way, take a step back, offer it a new view. And so with all that in today's episode, if you take anything from this episode, it's that you can trust yourself, and it's a practice to trust yourself. And many times we stumble and we fall. And, yes, I feel like I stumbled and I fell this month for many different reasons, many reasons not shared in this episode. But time and time again, I pick myself back up, and I see the gifts.
Amanda Durocher [00:26:27]:
Because I truthfully believe all the hardships we experience do hold a gift, and that can be really hard if you've experienced really hard things. As a rape survivor, I can tell you that those experiences were, in my opinion, hell on earth, but also offered me some of my greatest gifts because they brought me home to myself. And I'm not saying that everybody needs to go through those really hard experiences. I just believe that if we choose to grow and heal from them, they have a gem in them. And what a gift that life works that way. Because, truthfully, the people I know who have overcome hardship are some of the best people I know. And some of the people I know who have been given everything and live a life of privilege are some of, truthfully, the most horrifying people I know. God bless them, but, like, not for me.
Amanda Durocher [00:27:11]:
And so today, if things haven't gone according to plan for you, I invite you to look for the gift. And if that feels hard, I invite you to feel the feelings because that's a step of it. We have to feel the feelings. We have to feel all the feelings, The anger, the frustration, the disappointment. Sometimes we feel lost so that we can find a new path. We have to allow ourselves all the feelings and let go of the judgment, let go of the self doubt, let go of the criticism. But wherever you are, it is okay, and you deserve a fresh start this spring. And I am sending you so much love and sending you hope upon your path.
Amanda Durocher [00:27:43]:
And I believe that whatever you are here to do, you will do. You just may not know what that is yet. I also wanna offer that because, truthfully, I was laughing yesterday. Because when I was younger, I wanted to grow up and be all these different things. I never would've thought I'd be the girl on the Internet talking about surviving rape. I didn't know that was an option because I didn't know I had survived it because I repressed it. So how funny that life led me here. That a decade ago, I didn't even know this was on my path.
Amanda Durocher [00:28:09]:
But sometimes it's only through reflection that we can see why we're where we are, and we can see the gifts. So that is my answer to my own question today. I I hope there was something in there for you as well. I hope you found this episode helpful. I'm sending you so much love. Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. I am so grateful for everybody who listens, for having this conversation about what to do when things don't go according to plan. If you haven't already, I invite you to check out my website, newviewadvice.com.
Amanda Durocher [00:28:41]:
On New View Advice, we have podcast episodes, blog posts, poems. I have my reflection series where I share stories from my healing journey. And you can also ask a question on my website if you wanna hear a question answered on the podcast. So you can check all that out at newviewadvice.com. Thank you again for joining me for another episode of New View Advice. I hope I was able to offer you a new view. Sending you all my love. See you next time.