Ep 57: You Don't Need the Whole Plan
For a long time, I believed I needed to know exactly how everything would unfold before I could make a big decision.
As an attorney, professor, and lifelong planner, I was used to having a roadmap. But when I left my tenured position, my apartment, and the life I had built in California to move to Portugal, I didn't have one.
I only knew the next right step.
In this episode, I'm sharing why that decision became one of the most important lessons of my life. Recording from Porto before speaking at the Our Rich Journey FIRE Conference, I reflect on what it means to trust yourself before you have all the answers, why nervous system regulation matters more than the perfect plan, and how peace became the foundation for every decision I make.
I also share why I'm choosing to sell a property that once represented freedom, and how I realized that what once aligned with my values no longer supported the life I'm building today.
If you're standing between the life you've built and the life that's calling you, I hope this conversation reminds you that you don't need to know the entire staircase.
You only need enough courage to take the next right step.
Chapters
00:00 - Embracing Life Transitions
02:35 - The Journey to Portugal and New Beginnings
05:24 - Finding Peace in Financial Independence
08:40 - Aligning Actions with Inner Peace
11:26 - Reevaluating Life Choices for Peace
14:19 - Taking the Next Right Step
Key Takeaways
• You don't need the entire plan before you begin.
• Peace is not something you earn after reaching your goals—it can become the strategy that guides your decisions today.
• A regulated nervous system helps you recognize what is truly aligned for you.
• Your values may change, and your decisions can change with them.
• Every aligned step reveals possibilities you couldn't have seen before.
Come home to yourself.
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Asha (00:01.112)
Hello, hello. I am really excited to talk to you this morning for me because I am getting ready to speak at the R Rich Journey Fire Conference in Porto, Portugal. But the reason why I am excited to speak and the reason why I'm telling you about it is not because of the reward or the goal of speaking at the conference, but because it actually represents a
full circle moment for me since moving to Portugal. So here I go. I want to tell you today that when you are getting ready to make a life move or transition, or when you know that something is no longer aligned for you, you don't actually have to know the full step. You don't have to see the whole staircase of where you're going. You can trust yourself to make the next right step for you.
And trust that it's actually going to be okay. But I know if you are anything like me and if you have a career like attorney, doctor, accountant, engineer,
Asha (01:20.61)
Oops.
Asha (01:24.556)
Or any of those careers or even just a personality type, maybe a type A personality, where you are always planning the next three years, the next five years, the next ten years, you have a plan, it is gonna be really hard for you to just take the next right step when you don't know what the whole staircase is. But I'm here to tell you that if you have that inclination, if you know that something is no longer for you and you know you need to make a move in a different direction, but you don't know what the entire staircase looks like, that's okay.
Allow yourself to move anyway. Allow yourself to just take the next right step. So let me back into this story. In December 2023, I left Oakland, California. I'd given notice to my full-time professor position at a community college in Sacramento that I was not coming back. I gave notice to my apartment that I had lived in for 10 years with rent control. And I decided to move out of California.
Because I had received a visa to move to Portugal. And when I decided to leave, I knew that there were a few things that I wanted to explore, like coaching. I was already doing that in my business. I was doing business coaching. I was doing a little bit of life coaching, but I still hadn't landed on my niche. I still hadn't fully blossomed into what the next chapter was. And to be honest, it gave me.
Little bit of anxiety, probably more than a little bit. I was not comfortable not knowing exactly what the next step was or what the next stage would look like. I didn't know exactly what I was building, but I also knew that I couldn't stay. And somewhere deep down inside of me, I knew that I would figure out exactly what I needed to figure out in the process. But I'll be real with you, even though I knew that somewhere deep down, my little human body would still freak.
The F out every once in a while, like, what am I doing? How am I doing this? What decision did I make? But never at one point did I regret leaving and taking a chance on myself. I did feel really unsettled, not knowing exactly what the future was gonna look like. But I also knew that I was building it as I went. And what I didn't realize, I knew it, but I didn't know how to do it. I knew that I needed to settle my nervous system, but I didn't know how to settle my nervous system.
Asha (03:50.848)
When my mom would ask me, what's your plan? I would feel kind of bad because the plan was I'm gonna figure it out. I knew that I was going to keep working to get one-on-one clients. I knew that I was gonna keep working in the personal development space, but I didn't know exactly what that was gonna look like. I didn't know what all my offers were gonna look like. I didn't know exactly who my ideal client was gonna be anymore, but I knew that there were some tools that I had that I could continue to explore.
So fast forward to May 30th, 2024. And I landed in Portugal and moved into an Airbnb for a couple days before my long-term apartment was ready. And then about two weeks after that, my good friend from the States, Ariana, came to visit. And she came to visit because she had joined the Our Rich Journey 365 days to F.I.R.E. year-long program.
the year before. And we had both talked about joining this program together. And I think I had downloaded some stuff from them, had listened to a couple of videos, was loosely following the program, but also kind of building my own program as I went. And F.I.R.E. stands for Financial Independence Retire Early. So a few years before that, I had gotten the idea that I wanted to invest enough money or to create enough assets that I could retire early.
And the idea of retiring early was really that I could live my life and not just live to work to finance a life that would keep me on the hamster wheel. I really wanted to live, to live, to live, to live, not just to be going through the motions and doing the thing until I was 65 or 67 and could afford to retire. So Ariana and I had talked about joining the program. I ended up not joining the program because I knew that I was gonna be in transition.
And felt like it wasn't the right time for me to join it. But when she came to Portugal, we went to a couple of the meetups together and met some people. And then she ended up coming up to Porto for their conference. And that was the second year that they had done the conference. And I stayed in Lisbon doing my own thing. And I'd kind of forgotten about it. I knew that they were there.
Asha (06:13.59)
We crossed paths a few times in Lisbon or around Portugal, had some friends who were in the program. It was always still kind of there in the periphery. But you know, a year later, after I got to Portugal, I ended up starting the business, Asha's Place, the Healing Studio, and just kind of kept my head down, doing my thing. Asha's Place started to get more and more attention. And this year, the leaders asked me if I would be a speaker at the F.I.R.E. Conference.
In June. So this is why I am here in Porto recording this podcast from my hotel room in the hotel robe, drinking the hotel coffee. I love a good hotel, y'all. Preparing to give my talk this morning at the F.I.R.E conference. And again, it is not about the reward or the recognition that.
someone could see by speaking at the conference. It is really about me putting my head down and saying yes to the next right step, even when the steps I was taking looked like they might not be aligned with the F.I.R.E movement because I was leaving my full time job and essentially putting my finances at risk, but I was doing it to realign my life.
And my message today at the F.I.R.E. Conference is that the money is important, but your strategy has to be about peace. Your strategy has to be about alignment. Your nervous system is the foundation for whatever you decide to build. And that peace has to be the strategy. Peace is not actually the reward.
Because you can get to your goals and never experience peace, whatever your goals are. You can get the extra degree, you can save the money, you can travel the world. But if your nervous system is not balanced and regulated, and if your actions do not actually align with your internal goals, you will have everything in the world that you could possibly want, except for that peace, except for that internal alignment.
Asha (08:40.214)
And so in the work that I do, I teach you how to flip it on its head so that peace becomes your strategy. How do you want to feel when you get to your goals? We tap into that first. And then we practice feeling those emotions right away before you get there. So if peace is what you want, how can you find peace today? If security is what you want, how can you find security today?
Not once you've hit the goal, but how can you create a nervous system that feels secure? That experiences security? How can you create a nervous system that experiences peace? Because then when you are moving from that state and not from a state of scarcity or anxiety or fear, everything that you do will feel like it is in alignment.
You will have the thing before you actually have the thing. And your body will be aligning to create more of that thing that you want, more of that peace, more of that foundation, more of that security. And that is actually the key. Not to think about the goal and then hope that the emotional reward will come. No, it's to flip it, to reverse engineer, to desire map so that you think about.
How you want to feel, what you want to experience, call that in first and keep that as your compass or as your criteria for making decisions in the future so that your internal desires align with your external circumstances. So I feel like I'm a little bit all over the place because I am feeling lots of stuff. And of course I didn't script, I'm just talking to you as it is coming out.
But there's two things that I really want you to leave with. Keep your nervous system as your main priority. Figure out what makes you feel safe so that you can build on top of that nervous system. Make decisions that are are in alignment with how you want to feel. Make decisions that are in alignment with how you want to feel. Not that are in alignment with what you think that the goal is.
Asha (11:04.587)
Not that are in alignment with what society expects of you, but decisions that are really in alignment with how you want to feel. Does this investment create more peace in my life? For example, as I'm sitting here now getting ready to sell one of my properties that has tenants, at first the investment was in alignment with what I wanted. But now dealing with tenants.
Child, it is not peaceful. I had some squatters on the property. I'm just too far away, even though I have a management company, to really pay attention. The property is getting older and needs more financial investment, which I don't think makes sense because it's not a property that I actually want to live in anymore. It's the childhood property that I grew up on. And my last name is Wilkerson. My dad was the first person to buy a property up there. So he got to name the street Wilkerson Way. So there's a lot of nostalgia and a lot of
Pride and a lot of emotion that I feel towards this property, a lot of good feelings that I feel towards this property. It's beautiful. It's in the countryside, gorgeous view. The air feels clean and crisp and fresh and a little bit sweet because there's so many beautiful trees around. It is amazing. And yet, having this property, having tenants, feels like it is disturbing my peace because it is actually more than I can manage right now.
And so I had to reevaluate my position on this property ownership because my core value is peace. It's alignment. I don't want to be involved in things that stress me out. A little bit of stress is normal, but not that make me feel like I'm stuck or frustrated. And so because of a few things that have happened, the squatters that have moved in, and just recognizing that it's going to take a lot more of my time and energy than I have right now or that I'm willing to invest.
It's actually time to realign my property ownership strategy with how I want to feel. And so I'm deciding to sell that property and I'm going to invest the money in some other kind of a way. And that's what I mean about knowing what your core value is or knowing what emotion you want to feel. I invested in the property because I thought it would give me more financial freedom. What would financial freedom give me? Peace of mind.
Asha (13:30.518)
It's not actually working out that way right now. For a period of time, yes, but not now. I don't have peace of mind anymore. And so now I'm willing to make a new decision that aligns with how I want to feel inside, which is peace. And that, my friends, is how you have to move through life. That's how you keep your nervous system regulated. The other part that I really want you to walk away with and to understand is that you don't have to know exactly what's waiting for you in the future. All you need to know how to do is to take the next right step.
Because the staircase is still unfolding. When you take one step, it like lights up a whole new path. You get more options, you see more possibilities, more opportunities. And so there's no way that you can know what's at the end of the road for you because you don't you're not even making half the decisions that you're gonna have to make along the way. You just don't have enough data yet. You don't have enough information, but you do have enough data to decide what feels right for you in the next move. And who knew that two years ago, or even three years ago?
When my friend and I were talking about financial independence and looking at the Our Rich Journey program, the 365 days to F.I.R.E, talking about investing in the program to give us some guidance. Who knew that three years later and then two years after I moved to Portugal, I would be speaking at the conference about nervous system regulation as you invest? I wasn't even talking about that three years ago at the time when I was thinking about investing in the program.
So the point is, you just don't know what's waiting for you. But if you take the next right step based on what feels like it is aligned for you, and the alignment has to do with how you want to feel, you will be so rewarded and met with opportunities that you couldn't even have dreamt of. And that is how you live life. That is how you find peace. That is how you settle your nervous system. That is how you feel empowered.
That's how you live for you day to day. All right, my friends. That is it. Please let me know how this resonates for you. Let me know if you have any questions about anything that I said. Please feel free to comment on in the comments on Spotify or find me on Threads at @ashawilkersonesq so we can have a conversation and have a little fun on this journey called life. All right, ciao, ciao.