From [this book review.](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/31/book-review-zero-to-one/) 

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&gt;This disbelief in planning suggests, not a strategy, but a sort of meta-strategy. Do something vaguely in the space of what you want to do, don’t commit yourself to a specific plan, watch what happens, iterate, keep your options open at all time, and be prepared to pivot quickly once you know more.  
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&gt;But Thiel says the most successful visionaries of the past did the opposite of this. They knew what they wanted, planned a strategy, and achieved it. The Apollo Program wasn’t run by vague optimism and “keeping your options open”. It was run by some people who wanted to land on the moon, planned out how to make that happen, and followed the plan. Not slavishly, and certainly they were responsive to evidence that they should change tactics on specific points. But they had a firm vision of the goal in their minds, an approximate vision of what steps they would take to achieve it, and a belief that acheiving an ambitious long-term plan was the sort of thing that people could be expected to do. And great startups like SpaceX are much the same. Elon Musk started with a n-step plan to get to Mars, and he’s currently about halfway through.

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My question to you is, as a person with BPD, have you had long term plans that have been successful? By long term, I don't necessarily mean 2-5 years, instead it could be a combination of time (say, completing a degree) or complexity of steps (planning a complex trip or event).

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I've been working on getting my bachelor's degree (it pains me to say this) for nearly a decade, and the finish line is finally in sight. I used to plan backpacking trips: some of them went well, others not so much: at least one of those ended in a truly spectacular burst of depression due to my failure. Once I thought about opening up a business, and looking back that seems like one 3-month long feverish, mania.

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Looking back, sometimes I'm scared to make big bold plans: I know that I don't deal with failure well, I know I have an inclination towards unrealistic thinking, and I know that I'm not nearly as smart as Elon Musk. And yet, it seems to truly accomplish anything worthwhile, sometimes we have to risk it...

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r/BPD, tell me about your long terms plans: your successes, your failures, and how you think those results were influenced by your struggles with mental health.