Preparation is everything – or is it?

First Published 1 September 2022

How often we hear about the benefits of preparation?  Even going so far as to say it’s the most important concept ever?

• preparation is everything
• fail to prepare, prepare to fail
• preparation is the key to success
• the future belongs to those who prepare for it today
• a winning effort begins with preparation

and so on and so forth.  Many people have talked about preparation as being the key.  (I’m sure it was even part of the tagline for one of the companies I used to work for!)  But what is preparation?  And how much is really needed?

I know some people love to live last minute – ‘by the seat of their pants’ – and they succeed too… are they wrong?

I look back at parts of my life where I feel like I have done no preparation and still succeeded and then there are other areas where I have prepared every last detail and then things have not gone even close to resembling the plan.

So what’s the difference?  If I knew that, I would always have it totally right 😂

I have completed Tough Mudder with next to no prep, I even climbed Ben Nevis – with hindsight, had I trained for either of them I don’t think I would have even turned up on the day as I would have put myself off.

On the flipside, I studied like it was going out of fashion for my school exams and barely scraped through (granted – I would have failed had I not studied but I would have hoped with the amount of effort I put in that I would have achieved a little more than I did!).

I feel that we need to prepare as much as is right for us, in any given situation.  Yep – that’s another way of saying how long is a piece of string!!!

In many cases – over preparing can then lead to over thinking and a loss of creativity and spontaneity too – and in some cases (I speak from experience here) a loss of motivation or want to do ‘the thing’ that you spent all that time and effort preparing for.

Looking at my Ben Nevis climb – I suppose I did do some preparation – I prepared in so far as I signed up, I got people to sponsor me, I packed my bag for the walk and the overnight stay, and I made it to the bus at the ridiculously early time that we had to leave at. 

But that was it. 

I don’t believe any amount of training for the actual climb would have made the pain of the descent any less – in fact I probably would have done more damage to my knees beforehand and then not turned up on the day had I trained.  Silver lining (there’s always a lesson to be learned) is that I now know only to climb hills where I can catch a train to get back down!

Like most things in life, there is no one size fits all answer.  We need to take each situation as it comes and decide the best way forwards for us at any given moment.  What works for problem X today might not work tomorrow and might need to be tweaked before we work on problem Y.

This is one of the aspects of kinesiology I love.  What shows up for client X today might not be what will show up for them tomorrow – and I can pretty much guarantee that what showed up for client X will not be what shows up for client Y.  This means that my clients get what their body/soul is looking for at any given moment – and we always work to get the most out of the session for the person in the moment.  The same goes for coaching – I don’t follow a script, and we will go wherever you need to go.

If that’s peaked your interest or it’s been a while since you’ve had a session, then do come book in with me and see what’s showing up for you today.