Whenever I ask people how they are going to deal with a particular problem if it were ever to occur in the future, the response I often hear is, “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.” In other words, I’ll deal with that problem if it occurs, but I don’t want to be bothered with it now. One of the things I’ve learned about successful people is they almost never use this phrase. Rather, they’re continually thinking about problems that might occur in the future and they develop contingency plans to deal with them. As a result, if the problem does occur, they’re ready for it and the problem is resolved with without much of an incident. On the other hand, these same problems can become major obstacles if they’re not anticipated and contingency plans are not developed. The lesson here is that anticipating the future and planning for it can make our journey through life a lot smoother.