I am pretty sure you have seen or heard the saying “failing to plan is planning to fail”. Apart from it being a beautiful English pun and the work of a genius, a critical evaluation of its meaning and input gives us the answer to success. Life, they say, is “how you make it”; the “make” in this statement refers to the plans we make for living our lives.

As I grew up, especially after junior high school, I realised that there were a good number of my mates and kids in my neighbourhood who did not seem to have any sort of plan for their lives. Many of them lived by the day. Only 40% of my junior high school mates made it to senior high school, and only 20% of this made it into university. Interestingly enough, all of us who made it had dreams of going to university and had planned our lives around working hard in school to make it there. Without this plan, I doubt if any of us would have succeeded.

Further in life I have come to believe that the best definition of LUCK is “opportunity meeting preparation”. The “preparation” in this statement refers to the plans we make. We need plans in every facet of our lives; be it school, our career, relationships, or spiritual life. Without solid plans, all our efforts will be like guessing the winning numbers for a lottery. We will be living our lives at the mercy of chance. As the only species with the gift of free will and the power reasoning, is it not foolishness on our part to have our lives directed by chance?

You surely do not want to be like a boat without a captain on the sea, being blown into any direction as dictated by the waves. Make plans and goals for all areas of your life, using the age-old SMART rule. If you don’t know what the SMART rule is, just Google it!

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