I love being an overthinker. I love systems and patterns and order, and walking up and down the aisles of the container store. And I love it all the moreso because these have become the tools that allow me to enthusiastically say ‘yes’ in the face of the unforeseen twists of fate. What I used to call disruption I now recognize as entire point of life.

How many of us here have completed a meticulously crafted plan only to have some unwelcome variable throw a wrench in the getting lost on the way to a meeting. Or maybe it was something more elaborate. Maybe you laid out the perfect minute to minute schedule to get the Thanksgiving meal on the table at exactly 5:00 only to find that your second cousin has unexpectedly brought his new girlfriend and her eight siblings to the meal.

Well, how great would it be if instead of wanting to commit homicide in that moment you instead felt genuine excitement that you were being given the chance to share your table with eight new lovely people? How many of us would feel like that was a miracle?

Because that’s what we’re talking about here. The stress we feel when plans are broken is a useful indicator that those plans have become rigid, limited, that they are masquerading as the only way, and are in service of too small a vision.

Applied correctly, our plans should be supple, alive, and allow us to enthusiastically say ‘yes’ to life’s surprises. Well laid plans are the freedom to be spontaneous.

These days, if I find myself irritated because plans aren’t going my way, I’m immediately alerted to the fact that my over-thinking has nose-dived into rigidity. I’ve fallen into old thinking and forgotten what I’m actually doing all this planning for. I’m preparing for the awe-inspiring surprises of this life; the un-knowable, un-plan-able, totally chaotic-seeming beautiful moments that are actually opportunities to lead a richer life than I ever could have envisioned for myself.

And being able to now fearlessly welcome the unknown with open arms, now that’s what I call living.