Vic and I were watching a Richard Feynman lecture on YouTube recently, one of those deep dives into time, space, and quantum physics that makes your brain hurt in the best way. What struck me wasn’t the physics. It was something underneath it, about how much we love certainty, how hard our minds work to manufacture it even where it doesn’t exist, and how that love of certainty quietly limits what we allow ourselves to imagine as possible.

That’s what today’s episode is about.

Most of us spend a lot of energy trying to get one life right. The perfect career, the right relationship, the path that doesn’t disappoint anyone. And underneath all that effort is anxiety, because if there’s only one right choice, the margin for error feels very small.

The Odyssey Plan, which comes out of the Designing Your Life program at Stanford University, starts from an entirely different premise. There isn’t just one life that’s right for you. There are multiple versions that could make you happy, fulfilled, and aligned. The exercise doesn’t ask you to blow up your life or make any decisions at all. It asks you to expand what you allow yourself to see as possible.

That’s it. Just that.

Prefer the audio? Listen here.

Why We Stay Small

We love certainty. Physiologically, we’re wired for it. Uncertainty once meant danger, and our nervous systems haven’t fully caught up to the fact that the threat is now a career change rather than a predator.

For HFCs especially, there’s an added layer. We’ve been conditioned not to disappoint people. So we choose paths that won’t upset anyone, won’t destabilize anything, won’t look like a mistake. The third Boundary Boss Bill of Rights says you have the right to make mistakes, to course correct, and to change your mind. I wrote that specifically because I know how hard it is for high-functioning women to give themselves that permission.

When I left my career as a talent agent to get my master’s in social work, I was negotiating contracts for supermodels and celebrities. It was considered a very sexy job. My father’s response when I told him I was leaving it to become a psychotherapist was, and I quote, “Sounds weird.” I did it anyway. It took me three or four years of contemplating before I pulled the trigger. I’m hoping the Odyssey Plan shortens that runway for you.

The Three Plans

You’re not choosing anything yet. You’re just expanding. Give each plan its own session, maybe 20 to 30 minutes. All the journaling prompts are in the guide at terricole.com/guide.

Plan One: Your Current Life, Made Intentional

This is the path you’re already on, but taken off autopilot. If you stay in this career, this structure, this direction, how do you want to do it differently? More balance? Better boundaries? More creativity, more rest, more leadership? You’re not blowing anything up. You’re choosing it consciously instead of just inhabiting it by default.

Plan Two: The Alternative Life

This is the life you’d pursue if your current path suddenly disappeared. Your capabilities stay. Your worth stays. But your current role or structure is no longer available. What would you do?

This is where things get interesting. When you remove the default, your mind starts filling in what it actually wants. I’ve walked clients through this and watched them have immediate epiphanies, realizing they have more options than they’ve been allowing themselves to see.

Plan Three: The Wild Card

This is the one people resist most. It’s the life you’d live if money, approval, and fear were not factors. If success were guaranteed, what would you try? Who would you become? What part of you has been waiting to be seen that your current life doesn’t have room for?

This isn’t about quitting everything tomorrow. It’s about listening to yourself more honestly. A lot of us feel like we’ve waited too long for certain things. I’d gently push back on that. I have women in my community going back to school in their 60s and 70s. It’s never too late to intentionally expand who you are becoming.

What You’re Actually Doing Here

This exercise works for a few reasons. It reduces perfectionism because if there are multiple right paths, you can loosen your grip. It interrupts fear-based decision-making by having you play with possibilities rather than trying not to get it wrong. And it wakes up the part of you that may have gone dormant, the part that gets buried under habit and obligation and other people’s expectations.

For HFCs who have spent years centering everyone else, this exercise can feel uncomfortable. That’s the point. It requires you to center yourself. Your desires, not your partner’s, not your kids’, not your parents’. That can bring up guilt. It can bring up fear. It can bring up the feeling that wanting something different is somehow disloyal to the life you already have.

It isn’t. You can love what you have and still want more. You’re allowed.

The question isn’t what the perfect choice is. The question is whether you’re willing to consider what you actually want.

Write the three plans. Don’t edit yourself. Clarity doesn’t come from pressure. It comes from giving yourself permission to think differently.

If you want to do this work alongside a community of women who get it, come find us at terricole.com/tcm.

As always, take care of you.

Terri Cole Answers Your FAQs From The Week’s Blog

What is the Odyssey Plan? The Odyssey Plan comes out of the Designing Your Life program at Stanford University. The core idea is that there isn’t just one life that’s right for you. The exercise asks you to design three distinct versions of your life, not to choose between them, but to expand what you allow yourself to see as possible. It’s a tool for breaking out of the limiting beliefs and inherited expectations that quietly narrow our sense of what we can do and who we can become.

Do I have to make a decision after doing the Odyssey Plan? No. That’s actually the point. The exercise is about expanding your perspective, not forcing a choice. Many of us are so focused on getting one life right that we never consider the other viable paths available to us. Seeing those paths doesn’t obligate you to take them. It just gives you more information about what you actually want.

Why is it so hard to imagine a different life for yourself? For many of us, especially HFCs, the difficulty isn’t a lack of options. It’s that we’ve been conditioned to choose paths that won’t disappoint anyone, won’t destabilize anything, and won’t look like a mistake. Add to that the limiting beliefs we absorbed from family systems, culture, and gender conditioning, and the box we’re living in can feel like the only box that exists. The Odyssey Plan gently challenges that.

Is it too late to change direction if I’m already well into my life or career? No. The belief that you’ve waited too long is itself a limiting belief worth examining. Wanting something different isn’t disloyal to the life you already have. You can love what you have and still want more. Clarity about what you want doesn’t have an expiration date.