Life & Wisdom Quote by Sarah Ban Breathnach

“Plan A” is the fantasy version of adulthood: linear, optimized, and rewarded on schedule. Sarah Ban Breathnach punctures that fantasy with a phrase that sounds like a productivity mantra but quietly smuggles in a gentler moral standard. The wit is in the framing. She doesn’t deny ambition or planning; she demotes them. The measure of success isn’t the clean execution of an original script, but the grace and competence of revision.

The subtext is a cultural critique of meritocracy-as-storytelling. Plan A flatters our belief that outcomes are proof of character: work hard, choose correctly, win. Plan B admits what most lives actually look like: layoffs, illnesses, breakups, detours, caregiving, plain bad timing. By shifting the goalpost from control to coping, Breathnach reclassifies resilience as achievement rather than consolation prize.

“Smoothly” is doing a lot of work here. It suggests not just survival, but composure - the social skill of adapting without making everyone else pay for the chaos. That can read as empowering (you still have agency when the world changes), but it also reflects a modern pressure to be endlessly “fine,” to metabolize disruption privately and efficiently.

As an author associated with self-help and reflective living, Breathnach is writing into a late-20th/early-21st century anxiety: the sense that one wrong move ruins the whole arc. Her line offers an exit ramp from perfectionism. Plan B isn’t failure; it’s the actual curriculum.