#71: The Plan Often Changes. The Dream Doesn't Have To

The Plan Changed. The Dream Didn't.

What if being "off track" is actually part of the path?

For years, we've been taught that success comes from setting goals, creating plans, tracking progress, and staying disciplined enough to reach the destination.

But what happens when life presents an opportunity that wasn't part of the plan?

In this episode of Just Count Me In, Sari shares the deeply personal story of how a dream of relocating to South Carolina unfolded in a way she never could have predicted. What started as a clear goal and timeline transformed into something far better than the original plan.

Along the way, she explores:

• Why our brains crave structure and certainty

• The neuroscience behind goal-setting and planning

• The difference between having direction and becoming attached to a specific route

• The dangers of having no structure at all

• The hidden cost of becoming married to a plan

• How intuition and action work together

• Why "being off track" may actually be life's redirection

• What this means for students choosing careers, adults seeking change, and business owners pursuing growth

Most importantly, you'll learn how to hold a vision while remaining open to possibilities you could never have planned.

Reflection Questions

• What feeling are you truly seeking beneath your goals?
• Where might you be forcing a plan that no longer fits?
• What standards do you want to live by regardless of the outcome?
• What opportunities might be waiting beyond your current timeline?
• What if you're not off track at all?

Key Takeaway

The dream didn't change.

The vision didn't change.

The feeling didn't change.

Only the path changed.

Connect with Sari Stone

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Thank you for joining me!

If this episode resonates, please share it with a friend who needs a little inspiration today!

Transcript

Welcome And The Bigger Mission

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, welcome to Just Count Me In. This podcast is for people who are ready to stop living on autopilot and start creating a life that actually feels really aligned, meaningful, and fully their own. I'm Sari Stone. I'm a holistic coach, an educator, a tutor, and someone who definitely understands firsthand what it feels like to look like you've got it all together on the outside while secretly feeling disconnected from yourself on the inside. For years I followed the path that I thought I was supposed to take, checking all the right boxes, never really feeling all the way fulfilled, always feeling like I was living alongside my life. Everything shifted after a series of wake-up calls, powerful mentors, and I had some experiences that completely changed the way I saw life, purpose, and myself. Wayne Dyer says, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. And that's what this podcast is all about. Every week I'll bring you real conversations, mindset shifts, practical tools, some inspiring interviews, and give you some really honest ideas for reflections to help you break through your limitations, reconnect with yourself at a deeper level, and create lasting transformation from the inside out. Because whether I am coaching adults, tutoring students, or speaking with entrepreneurs, one thing is always true. People thrive when they finally believe they're capable of more. We'll talk growth, healing, relationships, purpose, confidence, spirituality, and what it actually means to live authentically in a world that is constantly telling you who to be. So if you're ready to trust yourself more, to think differently, and step into the life that you actually were meant to live, just count me in. Let's do this together. Hit subscribe and share this with someone who needs it.

A Move That Started With A Feeling

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Welcome, welcome back to Just Count Me In. Or if you're joining me for the first time, welcome to Just Count Me In, a podcast about transforming your life into the life that you really were meant to live. I'm Sari Stone and I'm your guide. A few years ago, I thought I knew exactly how our move to South Carolina was going to happen. That's where we live now. Actually, that's not quite true because what we knew first wasn't where we were going exactly. We knew what we no longer wanted. We knew that something in our lives no longer fit with our geographical location. And then out of nowhere, one day in August, there came this feeling, this pull that I had inside of me, kind of like a knowing that we should check out South Carolina. The really funny part is that we had never lived here or been through here. We barely knew it. We didn't have jobs, we didn't have roots, we didn't have family here, we had no connections. What we had was a direction and a pull. So we took a vacation down, my husband actually liked it too, and we he felt it. So we bought a house here and created a plan. And the plan was pretty simple, pretty linear. Wait until Audrey graduates high school and then make the move. It looked really responsible, very logical, it felt organized. I was excited, had it on the vision board, and then life happened. My husband's business needed him. All of a sudden, the timing didn't feel right. Now, if I had been measuring our progress against the original plan, I would have believed that we were failing. I would have thought that we were off track. But what if being off track is sometimes exactly how life gets you where you're meant to go? Because during that delay, absolutely everything changed. We actually found land, not because we were originally thinking we could do it, not because it was part of our original plan. Actually, the listing photos were so bad, it was an aerial view, and no one else wanted it because land kept coming up, and as soon as we would contact the realtor, it would have been sold within a day. So we were so lucky that it was just a bad picture of this place. And the minute my feet touched down on this land, I knew that this was home, not the house that we bought, not the plan that we created, this right here that I'm recording this podcast in. We had no idea how we would make this happen. But one piece fell into place and then another piece fell into place. The people renting our house decided to buy it, and we were able to build our home. On top of it, we met friends here when we were just coming down and looking, who actually became part of our lives. My husband met the person who connected him with the job he has today only because we lived here. None of it existed in our original plan. And that's what I want to talk about today.

Direction Versus Attachment To The Route

SPEAKER_00 5:15

The difference between having a direction and becoming attached to the root. Sometimes the greatest gift is having the courage to let the plan evolve while staying really faithful to your vision. I used to think that it was one or the other. And I think most people probably think that it's not the same. It's not what I used to think at all. I used to think the choices were either I have a detailed plan and control everything and look at my benchmarks and see what behaviors are driving me towards that and which ones are not in my favor, and there's definitely a value for that. Or I could throw away structure and just trust the universe, which I'm also really good at doing. But I didn't realize how the two could be intertwined. Our story here kind of gives you a third option. Like we had a knowing that we wanted a different life, we had a direction, and we definitely had a willingness to take action and had a plan. But when life presented new information, we didn't force the original plan to survive. That distinction is absolutely everything. And we know the brain loves plans. I love a good plan. It makes me feel really calm. It makes me feel like I've got some kind of control over my life, which we like. So the transition would be something like where in your life are you clinging to a plan that no longer fits? What feeling are you really seeking underneath the goal? And what standards are you committed to living, like no matter what the outcome? What opportunities might you be missing because it doesn't match your original timeline? And what would happen if you trusted that direction without demanding the route? I think this episode is going to resonate with you. So the plan changed, but the dream didn't. Let's dive in.

The Sweet Spot Between Intuition And Action

SPEAKER_00 7:24

I think what happens is sometimes we get so focused on the structure that we stop listening. And other people sometimes can become so focused on the intuition that they stopped acting, they stopped taking the actions. To me, and I've been exploring this a lot, the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle. Alignment without action becomes just wishful thinking. And then action without alignment is forced and it becomes exhaustion. What we're really looking for is both. We're looking for direction and we're looking for flexibility. We want that feeling of vision, we want surrender, we want commitment, we want devotion, we want openness. And it's possible to have it all. So I'd say for the students listening, which I've been coaching a lot of lately. A lot of the people that I coach are students, especially those trying to decide on what you want to do with the rest of your life at the age of 17, 18. I want you to hear this. You don't need to know exactly where you're going to be 20 years from now or 10 years from now. You need to know who you're becoming. You need to know what makes you feel alive inside. You need to just stay curious and pay attention. Pay attention to what energizes you and then take that next step. Life is often revealed one chapter at a time. Sometimes we don't know the ending of the book. If you're out there and you feel stuck or unhappy or restless, maybe the question isn't what's my five-year plan? Maybe the better question is what feeling am I trying to create in my life? And do I need to wait five years for that? Because the goal itself isn't what we really want. What we want is that feeling that we think achieving that goal will bring. Are we going to feel peace? Do we want to feel freedom? Do we want to feel like we belong somewhere and we have a purpose? Do we want to feel connection? And for business owners listening, yes, you absolutely need targets, you need matrix, you need strategy. But maybe don't become so attached to the root that you miss opportunities that are trying to find you. Because sometimes what I've seen is the greatest growth comes out of possibilities you never put on your spreadsheet or your action plan. So today I want to share with you just a few questions. Where are you forcing a plan that doesn't any longer fit? What feeling are you really seeking beneath your goals? And what opportunity might be trying to find you if you just loosen your grip a little bit? What if you're not off track? What if life is simply taking you somewhere a little bit better than you imagined?

Why Your Brain Craves A Plan

SPEAKER_00 10:30

Your brain loves plans because plans actually reduce uncertainty. And the primary job of our nervous system is survival. So when we create a plan, the brain gets dopamine and reward because it feels like we have reduced our risk. I love creating plans. I created action plans and smart goals with second graders, okay? I was all about this, and I'm not anti-plan, but I do want to say that there's another side to it. The plan becomes a prediction, and predictions feel safe for your brain. Even if the prediction isn't ideal or doesn't feel right after a while, this is why people often stay in jobs they hate or relationships they've outgrown or towns that they no longer feel good in. The familiar always is going to feel safer than the unknown. And I didn't know this about the brain 20 years ago when I was doing this with second graders. Neuroscientists often describe the brain as a prediction machine. It constantly tries to anticipate what's going to happen next. It gives your brain kind of a detailed plan and it gives us certainty. The problem with that, hello, life is not predictable. What really diverges from the prediction, people experience stress, not because something's wrong, but because something violated the brain's expectations.

The Two Traps: Rigidity Or Passivity

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Then there's also a danger of no structure. And I live in that realm also. I live in all of it. If everything is follow your intuition, and I am totally 100% trust your gut, trust your intuition. The danger that I see in myself with this, if I don't have some type of structure, is that I can become very passive and not take action or stay open to things as much as I should be. Sometimes I'm waiting for a sign where I should be just feeling the inspiration and taking a little step in that direction for things to open up for me. I'm maybe waiting for certainty. I'm waiting for it, and then nothing happens. So if I'm just aligned without anything else, without some type of plan or awareness, I'm gonna say, of the feeling that I actually want, I wouldn't make any changes. I mean, our family, we Stan and I didn't sit around waiting for South Carolina to come to us. We bought a house. We explored possibilities, we kept moving. There's a big danger of being married to the plan, and this is where I coach people and most high achievers get stuck. The plan starts to become more important than your life. Imagine if we had forced the original timeline, we would have missed out on the land. We would have not been living in a house that we actually built. We would have missed the perfect safe timing and the friends and the job connections that my husband had. We would have achieved the goal, the original goal, but we would have missed the life, the beautiful life that the goal was technically about. Sometimes we achieve the goals and we miss the life. You know, Wayne Dyer often talked about living from inspiration rather than obligation. And he might say, you don't attract what you want, you attract what you are. In this story, we were not obsessing over controlling every step. We felt lost a lot of the time. We were looking at each other and just saying, Oh my gosh, this is what I thought we were supposed to be doing. It's not working out. Definitely, it was not working out the way we had planned. We had to surrender it. We had to let go of it. That was a time to not be married to the plan and just surrender it and open up to what did feel right and what was working out. The opportunities only appeared to us because we stayed open and it wasn't pretty. We were not sitting there calm and serene during this time. I don't want to give you that impression. Some of it was stressful, some of it was really frustrating. And then all of a sudden, we would take a step, take a little bit of action, and something would open up for us. I think Esther Hicks would very likely focus on the feeling

Standards Over Goals And The Feeling State

SPEAKER_00 15:07

state. And she would probably say the original goal was not really our house to begin with, that the house and the move represented a feeling. We wanted to represent belonging, we wanted to feel freedom, we wanted to feel space, we wanted to feel in harmony with our environment, we wanted to be around heart-centered people. So the mistake made in attaching those feelings to one specific path was a mistake that we almost made. When we insist on only one path to get to that feeling, we create resistance. What we did here demonstrated allowing because we stayed connected to the feeling while we let the path evolve. This ties a lot into the episode where we talked about standards versus goals. Maybe the standard was we are people who listen to our inner knowing. We are people who trust timing. We are people who take action when opportunities arise. We are people who create a life that feel aligned. We are people that ask, God, what do you have? Show me what you want me to do. The goal changed. It doesn't look like it did when we first planned it. If you looked at the vision board back when we were doing vision boards from back then, it wasn't exactly what we have. The standard remained, and it ended up being better than we ever could have imagined it.

Advice For Students Choosing A Path

SPEAKER_00 16:40

So I tell my kids, the kids that I'm coaching, you don't need to know what you're going to be doing at 45 when you're 18. You need to know the person you're becoming when you're 18. A career choice does not have to be a life sentence. A major in college is not an identity. The pressure comes from believing that there's one perfect path, and they are feeling really pressured right now. And life doesn't work that way. I tell them to ask themselves, what are you curious about? What environments energize you? What problems do you look around and see in the world that you might want to be a part of solving? What kind of person do I want to become? What kind of people do I want to be around? And to me, those questions age with you much better than what career should I choose forever. If you're a person who's in the middle of changing your life because you're not vibing with where you are, because you've outgrown with where you are, you don't need a perfect five-year plan. What you need is a direction. You definitely need a standard. You need a willingness to move. You need to take a first step. And that first step reveals the second. They say, take one step towards me and I'm going to show you everything. The second step reveals the third. If you try to map out the entire journey before taking one step, that step actually keeps you stuck.

Business Targets Without Being Imprisoned

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Business needs targets. Revenue goals matter, performance indicators matter, but the target should inform decisions, not imprison them. A business owner might say, like, I need to reach seven figures by the time I'm 30. Fine. But if they're married to just one market, one strategy, one customer type, one product, they may be missing out on opportunities that are far better. The goal provides direction for them. Adaptability creates growth. So what if life is just taking you somewhere even better than you ever imagined?

Share The Episode And Take One Step

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Thank you so much for spending your time with me today. I know that there's a million other things you could be doing, and I so appreciate this. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who may be feeling stuck between a place where they are and a place where they may want to be, or maybe a person who's feeling pressured because people are expecting them to have a lot of answers fast. Until next time, please remember you don't have to have the entire path figured out. You only need enough courage to take the next aligned step. And as always, just count me in.