Why your best laid career plans may fail. Yes, that is actually a good thing.

Last weekend I was at my brother’s house and saw a flyer advertising a course on building resilience in children and I was struck by how much of that kind of help was missing when I was growing up.

The course included open discussion and sharing experiences on what failure felt like, along with some sessions on mindfulness and meditation.

For me growing up, if you ever shared what you were weak at, you got bullied.

There was a deep shame attached to not doing well.

So, like everyone else, I learned coping mechanisms.

Mine was to generally pretend I was invisible so I did not get picked on. Other kids ran with the pack and tried to fit in. I assume trying to be the same as other kids so there was safety in numbers.The really “tough” kids picked on other kids first, so they did not pick on them.

It all seems such a sad waste of energy when I think about it.

School, which was supposed to be about learning, was not a place where experimentation could thrive. Or where you could actually stumble upon something you loved to do, without the fear that someone would bully you about it.

Now, thank the stars, there is a move away from that type of thinking.

In business there’s a movement called F*ckUp nights – where business owners share with others where they have royally screwed up. The idea is to reduce the shame around failure and learn something from the process.

The nights are hilarious, not from the fact that we are laughing at people have made a mess up, but that we expose all our weird thinking that can lead to a screw up. And that despite our best laid plans, things can go awfully awry. Most people connect the dots, can relate to the stories, and celebrate the courage of the people who share them.

The idea that failure is not a bad thing is an idea embedded in a career development theory by an American Psychologist John D. Krumboltz called “career happenstance”.

It’s the idea that you cannot really plan in advance for what you want to do.

It’s logical really, if you haven’t done something before, how will you know that you’ll enjoy it or not, or where that might take you.

Instead of too much planning, his theory states that it’s better to engage in a variety of interesting and beneficial activities, be aware of your reactions, remain alert to alternative opportunities and learn skills along the way that help you succeed.

I like his idea because if you are like me, you can get stuck in a linear thought pattern that we must stick to a plan. If that plan does not work then it’s easy to think that we’re somehow undisciplined and need to try harder – a failure, even. From that type of fear nothing great ever grows.

Our plan might be the idea that it’s only one particular career or job working out in the way that we can imagine that will make us happy.

I also like this idea because it means that making change and discovering what we do love, does not have to be as dramatic as leaving a job or doing a massive u-turn.

It can be as simple as introducing a few new things into our lives and staying alert to how we really think about them.

Happenstance has worked for me in my career – particularly when I have set an intention that I want something to happen. That intention isn’t a goal, it’s been more of an ambition, and putting myself in places where that ambition could be furthered or fulfilled.

When I was wanting to do something different with my career, I had no idea what that could be. The GM of the organisation where I was working told me that I was one of the few people in the organisation who could actually write.

So armed with that tiny gem I had coffee with a friend of a friend who ran a magazine and asked her what she enjoyed about what she did. At the end of that discussion I said I enjoyed writing, and she suggested I write a piece for her. I built on that experience, gained some confidence, and pitched ideas to other magazines.

Ultimately that’s taken me down a path to where I am today.

From something I perceived to be a bit of a mess up – me in the corporate world, I applied a level of curiosity and a desire to experiment.

That’s my very happy story about happenstance.

I’d really love to hear yours.