The Journey Is The Destination

During an unprecedented October snowfall, our kids headed out to play in the snow, and my wife suggested we go out and join them.  We tossed on our snow clothes and headed out to meet our kids, including our Yellow Lab, who thinks she is a kid, too.  We headed to the golf course hills and found the group fighting for speed in the wet, slow snow.  Mitchell decided we needed to build a ramp to jump start our sled run, so we invested the next hour working with easy-packing snow building this enormous ramp.  It was a great start for the slow run.  Ironically, once we built it, we took three or four runs and decided we were all cold and wet – time to head home. 

Isn’t that often the case?  We invest so much time in the journey in order to get to the destination, only to find the journey was the real destination.  We had more fun building the ramp than we did using what we built.  Strangely, our family often enjoys the car ride to our vacation destination almost as much as the vacation itself.  In sales, I learned to CHOOSE to enjoy the difficult activities that led to the rewarding results.  It was in those activities I grew the most, and I figured if I had to invest my time and life anyway in making calls, setting appointments, presenting ideas and solutions, I might as well CHOOSE to enjoy all of it.  Interesting, enjoying the moments made them better for those I was around as well, and ultimately helped me succeed.

Life is too precious not to enjoy the moments between the rewards.  Let’s make a conscious decision to enjoy the minutes, hours and days that lead up to whatever we think we are after, making the most of every day we are gifted.   A mentor of mine always reminded me to ENJOY THE JOURNEY. He was and is absolutely right.

Helen Keller said, “Is life not a thousand times too short to bore ourselves”?