Plan Plans, Not Results

Plan plans, not results. We can try our best in every situation. We can wake up each day and make a firm intention to be a better spouse, parent, friend, or coworker. Instead of going out of our way to criticize people, we can go out of our way to support them. We can refuse to allow negativity in our life and vow to be an instrument of peace and positivity. But we cannot save another person from his or her own destructive habits. We can love someone with our entire heart and soul but accept the fact that we cannot save anyone but ourselves. Sometimes that means detaching with love rather than enabling someone to use us to continue their self-destructive slide into oblivion. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot stop someone from engaging in self-destructive habits through their own free will. 

When someone passes away or gets into serious trouble, there is a tendency to think, “I should have done more,” or “I should have been there for them,” even though we have loved them to the best of our patience and capabilities. We planned to love them and we did love them. In the past, we may have been naive enough to help enable their self-destructive habits. But we cannot blame ourselves if our love was not enough to stop their own free will from continuing to make self-harming choices. We cannot make choices for anyone but ourselves. Our loved ones can make their own choices and then experience the consequences of those choices. If the consequence of their self-harming behavior is death or a loss of freedom, we can grieve, mourn, pray, and love, but it’s self-harming on our part to engage in the fantasy that we could have stopped them.