23 Jun What Influences Your Life More …Relationships, Happenstance or Planning?
By Ruth Schimel PhD. Career & Life Management Consultant, Author
© 2025. Not for commercial use without permission.
ruth@ruthschimel.com www.ruthschimel.com 202.659.1772
“The only ones who see the whole picture are the ones who step outside the frame.”
Salmon Rushdie, novelist
What is your experience with planning?
I bet you’ve been advised about the importance of planning to make your personal and professional life effective. Though a reassuring exercise, planning early in life may keep you in a static mode when additional time and experience are crucial for knowing yourself. That time provides experience, connections and confidence for managing the naturally dynamic situations of life.
That’s one reason why I show my career and life management consulting clients how to start first from the inside out, explore who they are, rather than focus first on what’s “out there.” By attending to what’s unique and significant about yourself, you’re more likely to have an inspiring constant, whatever the dynamic circumstances around you.
My own experience and learning from others’ lives make me wonder why the seductive sense of focus, control and direction of planning should be given prime attention for creating a satisfying, authentic life with meaning and purpose(s). https://www.betterup.com/blog/life-planning.
There are other valuable influences. Here are three brief autobiographical vignettes that show how relationships and happenstance resulted in major directions of my life. As you read them, consider how they may relate to and clarify experiences, situations and opportunities in your own life.
Choice of college based on a neighbor’s suggestion.
At the age of two I “attended” Cornell University when my father studied for his master’s degree during summer vacations from teaching. While college shopping for myself, I had avoided the Cornell connection; admission was highly competitive and costs too high for my family. Nor had my high school advisor suggested considering it.
During an independent conversation with one my neighbors who were friends of my parents, Joe Godfrey asked me about my interests. He told me about the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) at Cornell. When I explored that new possibility, I found its curriculum a great match for my wide-ranging interests in the meaning of work for individuals and society and process of human development. As a state school, costs were low. They accepted me and that experience changed the trajectory of my life as you’ll see.
Relationships and initial choice of profession.
In my senior year at ILR, I made close friends with several visiting students from labor unions and other countries. One of them came from Turkey. Over time, I believed I was in love with him. Since he was returning to his country, I hatched a naïve plan with him to join the Foreign Service and get stationed in Turkey to be nearby.
After graduating, I worked for a year to save money while living at home with my parents who had been welcoming to Nusret. Following travel on a low-cost cargo-passenger freighter to Naples and then Rome, where I stopped to visit family friends, I flew to Istanbul.
Sparing you the whole complex story, the upshot was I took the Foreign Service written test in Ankara. In the midst, I lived with Nusret’s family outside of Istanbul in plain village circumstances for several months. As I got to know him better on his own turf, my infatuation soon dimmed. But I did pass the written test and the following oral test in New York City. That led me to 20 years as a diplomat.
What main factors and experiences led you to make your initial choices about work and love?
Choice of PhD dissertation topic
While in the Foreign Service, I also obtained my Master’s degree in public administration, workforce development and human resources. Afterwards, I made a strategic choice to start working toward my PhD as a bridge to my future. I thought the credential and flexibility of the learning process would open up a range of choices related to my interdisciplinary interests.
Combining work and studies, I moved at a pleasant pace until the requirements for completion forced me to finally choose a dissertation topic. Though I wanted to find something I really cared about that would also be useful to others, nothing came to mind.
Procrastinating almost until the due date for finishing left no wiggle room, I made my last gasp of avoidance at an informal university discussion group on organizational development. Though not even my focus, I was curious to hear what they had to say. The participants spoke at length about academic theories for improving organizational effectiveness.
Based on my work experiences in several organizations and study, I was not impressed with their pitches. I thought, if so much was known, how come many organizations remained problematic, poorly managed or ineffective.
My internal thoughts went public as I took the floor and surprised myself with a passionate mini speech questioning conventional wisdom about “fixing” organizations. I knew it was not the inanimate organization at issue, but the people and leaders in them. They tended to avoid the actions that could lead to improved results benefiting the people within as well as those they served.
As I got wound up speaking, I actually had a vision! I saw the image of a movie marquee. On a white background with yellow kliegs lighting the edges were the bold red letters of COURAGE. The word got legs as I said the real reason for significant issues in organizations was the lack of courage of leaders and supervisors to address them in forthright ways. When I sat back down next to the professor in charge of the doctoral program. I whispered to him: “That’s what I want to do my dissertation on: courage.”
I’ll spare you the bumpy, interesting challenges of implementation for my PhD . After almost a ten-year process, I did complete my dissertation on how people develop and express their capacity for courage. Using ideas and information from aspects of philosophy, psychology and interviewing, I synthesized the conclusions into one actionable, viable sentence. Transcending conventional explanations about acts of courage and presence of individual qualities, I defined courage as a process of becoming.
Becoming courageous involves the willingness to realize your true capacities by going through discomfort, fear, anxiety or suffering and taking wholehearted, responsible action.
In turn, this led to writing seven books and my future work in consulting and writing after resigning from the Foreign Service.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/12/books/kay-ryan-turtle-poem.html?smid=em-share
How did you come to discover and express work you truly wanted to do? Postscript.
Several other turning points in my life had similar characteristics as you may have noted in the vignettes. Rather than being planned conventionally, the catalysts of relationships also included curiosity, spontaneity, happenstance and luck. Though there were no eruptions of my unconscious into a vision, I’d like to think my turtle-like procrastinating allowed some savory simmering of ideas and actions. They created a series of hearty soups nutritious for myself and others.
French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur said luck (or chance) favors the prepared mind. But in my case, I’d be more specific. Curiosity, learning and relationships coalesced, giving my mind and emotions foundations for building further explorations, transitions and useful outcomes – processes again.
https://bigthink.com/business/curiosity-as-a-survival-skill-to-navigate-change/
Conclusions
Wherever you are in your life, I hope you won’t be wasting as much time as I did with procrastination, detours and questionable judgement. Not t
hat any life tends to be neat, easy or linear. If so, it would probably not be as interesting, original or contain
opportunities for growth.
Listen to Sal Khan’s commencement speech at Carnegie Mellon for how Kahn Academy came into being:
But I think keeping inappropriate distractions, simplistic labeling and internalized expectations of others at a minimum can improve your quality of life. Maybe reincarnation will give us do-overs, but I won’t count on it. In the meantime, through my work and relationships, I encourage others to seek self-knowledge, authentic choices, adventure, and effective timing.
https://bigthink.com/smart-skills/how-curiosity-rewires-your-brain-for-change/
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