Rachel Klaver is a marketing strategist, specialising in lead generation and content marketing.

OPINION: Is there anything more devastating than a plan you wished and hoped for not coming to fruition? Absolutely there is. It’s holding onto that lost and broken dream and never moving past it.

I’m in the midst of making some incredible plans for both our business and life in general. The problem is, some of them require a few things that are currently out of my direct control.

While I can definitely create some general goals I’ve got a fair amount of power in making happen, the specifics are very much “cross my fingers and hope things work out the way I’d like them to.”

We’re in the middle of completely relocating our lives and business to Canterbury. When I say we’re in the middle of it, in reality we’re still at the “selling our house stage”, but in our mind, we’re moved, unpacked and ready.

We’ve built our plans up and broken them back down over and over again as we’ve fallen in love with houses, ideas, places and thought about what this new stage will look like.

As we’ve been going through this, some of my clients have also been going through major changes to their business, or the intersection between their business and their life outside of work. We’ve been talking as a group about how to let go of wasted plans, of big risks that didn’t pay off, and the pain of seeing the money, time and energy you poured into them just be written off.

I personally believe nothing is ever wasted. Perhaps it’s the teacher training in me, that taught me to look for the learning in every experience, and reflect on what we can take and discard. It’s also likely the fact that I’ve now had so many different failures along with success, that I can see that sometimes the success has come from the depths of failure. I’d never wish the dark moments on anyone, but I can see how it’s possible to make something good out of it eventually.

A failed plan isn’t necessarily a bad plan. Sometimes it’s timing. I’ve lost count of how many business owners I’ve worked with who took a leap or launched a dream business in late 2019 or early 2020, and then Covid hit. Whether they shut it down then, pivoted to something left-field, or trod water, waiting it out and hoping they’d last, timing was the reason those businesses suffered.

Seven years ago, we were running a business on the brink of failure. We ended up successfully turning it all around, and now it’s more closely aligned with how I dreamed it would be, but one of the things we did at the outset of rebuilding was sit down and work out our sunk cost limits.

How much money, time and energy would we put into the rebuild, and at what level would we shut it all down and walk away? One of our boundaries was we’d not do more personal borrowing against our home. We got very close to that defined limit before things turned around.

I know without a doubt we would have stuck to our agreed limit if we’d had to, and walked away. It would not have meant our time trying to save the business was wasted in any way. We’d just need to replace it with a new plan.

Hindsight can often help us see where we could have done better, or chosen another path. When I look at the plans I originally made for our business, I can see all the places I went wrong. The worst thing I can do is waste energy ruminating over it all. Instead, I take those lessons, and apply them to the next step forward. It helps me make a more robust new plan.

I’ve also learnt the power of being kind to ourselves. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. Our original plan was created with all the information we had at the time, and we made choices we believed were the best ones.

While some people believe having a back-up plan (or an exit strategy, if it all falls apart) is a weak move, I find it really good to look at alternative moves for different outcomes. At the moment we’ve got a really clear idea of what we’d like to build on next year. But it’s reliant on some factors currently out of our control.

Part of me just wants to go all in and focus on the most positive outcome. Instead, we’ve made numerous plans that take elements of the ideal plan, and rework them into a new option. As we’ve done that, we’ve also been able to see what the most important features are of the original plan, and what can be discarded if needed. Plan Bs and Cs can help us refine plan A.

When plans all fall apart, and everything is raw, we sometimes need time to rest, pause and take stock. In those times I’ve learnt to be kind to myself, and the people around me who’ve been affected by the failed plans.

I’ll focus on the small things that add a sense of success and achievement to my day. This could be getting dressed (if things are at an all-time low), or getting a walk and some nutritious food in, right up to getting essential home and work tasks completed.

In the early days of a failed business venture, it’s hard to see past it. Our businesses often become entwined with our personal identity. It can impact our emotional, financial, and mental well-being. It can involve people we love and care about.

All of this is hard and terrible. It’s understandable we’d be resistant to seeing any good in the mess.

If we can focus on the incredible power of resilience, there can be room for future success. A huge part of that for me has been learning to understand that success comes from also experiencing failure. That there are often many failed plans on the way to reaching the big goals.

This helps me to reset, trust myself to make a new plan, and push through to start building again.