Last week I wrote more about my personal journey in planning for business success. Taking big projects, breaking them down into manageable pieces, and then planning the details for how to make it all happen is one of my favorite things in the world. I joke that planning is my superpower, although I love getting my hands dirty too.
The truth is that, unchecked, I am absolutely a workaholic in both planning and accomplishing tasks (the bigger the better!). But over the past almost-decade of flower farming, I’ve learned tons about balance, and built into my life a system of important checks to keep myself from unhealthfully overworking. I’ve also learned to not let myself fall into the trap of chasing satisfaction with accomplishments that never really, totally satisfy.
Going back to the post from last week, I’ve noticed that if I look practically at what happens to my emotions when our Farm Plan (or even my personal Life Plan) gets askew, I can learn some valuable lessons about how I move through life.
When I stop working on the chunk of plan that is MINE to implement and instead let myself get overwhelmed with the big picture of everything that needs to be done, OR when I have not planned well and left too much on my own plate and the overwhelm sets in, I find myself procrastinating. You should know that procrastinating is not my normal reaction to anything. It’s not in my nature. When I see a problem, my proclivity is to dive right in and fix it up! So when I detect a pattern of procrastination, I’ve learned to treat it as a huge “red flag” or “caution light” that my Plan needs re-organizing.
It’s January now, which is the planning time of year for many people, including our farming/gardening followers. So friend, how’s your goal-setting and planning going? We’re often encouraged to dream big, but sometimes the BIG can equal a staggering number of tasks to accomplish.
Are you feeling overwhelmed, even thought it’s still mid-January? I know at least a few of my flower friends are. Sometimes the feeling is obvious, but other times I have to watch for my “caution light” to know that I’m headed down the wrong path.
Practical helps like these are amazing diagnostic tools, but I also want you to know that I deeply believe that God gives me the ability to work, gives me gifts and skills that make me unique and allow me to do the work he has called me to, and that putting my hope in him gives me the strength to do what I am supposed to do.
With that in mind, I would like to share my opinion about the “canaries in the coal mine” for a needed Plan Reset/Reorganization for the other 8 enneagram-personalities. While I am no personality expert, and am not a certified enneagram anything, I am an enneagram fan, and I find it a useful (although not foolproof) tool to use in understanding the people around me. If you’re also a fan, I hope you’ll let me know what you think!
For 1’s, I would say that feeling unexpectedly restless could mean you are trying to do too much and should break down the main plan you’re operating under into more bite-sized pieces. For 2’s, you might find a compulsion to be controlling signals the same thing. I’ve already talked about 3’s, but 4’s might find a tendency to overcommit to areas outside their main employment, and 5’s might find themselves wanting to isolate when their plan is overwhelming and not manageable. 6’s might find themselves overly, unexpectedly competitive, while 7’s night find themselves ditching their fun-loving nature in favor of more rigid or moralistic approaches to their overwhelming situation. 8’s might find themselves over-thinking instead of “doing” as much as they typically accomplish, and I think 9’s might find themselves stuck in apathy about the overwhelming project at hand.
If you know your enneagram number, and if you live your life by implementing a Business Plan or Ministry Goals, or even a personal Life Plan, I’d love to know if you’ve experienced these red flags in response to overwhelming circumstances.
If you can take a step back, reformulate your plan to small, doable steps, and find relief, you may also find the ability to move forward in the plan that you are perfectly suited to accomplish.
Personal note: Maybe the more “capable” you are, the more tempting it is to use tools like personality-driven caution lights to indicate that you’re overwhelmed and then proceed to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. That scenario is not my goal in sharing these tips, but rather to share my heart on realizing my own weaknesses and letting the indicator light of my weakness propel me to keep growing in grace.