Apr

[Focus Mag] Journey vs. Destination – Explained!

Our FOCUS:

There are all these mostly annoying quotes and clichés out there saying “it’s the journey, not the destination.”

Well, I’ve got bad news, they are ALL correct! I can help you get this concept from your head into your heart.

It is one of the things that has shifted my life, so I want to give you the tools to embrace it too. So come on, let’s unpack this thing.

Arthur Ashe – American No.1 World Tennis player, Winner of 3 Grad-Slams, First Black Male World Tennis Champion

Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome.

Today’s TRAINING: Journey vs. Destination – Explained!

I feel “prove-y” today! So, I am setting out to prove that it really IS the journey and not the destination and WHY this is an easy but HUGE shift to make in your life.

Given #1 – Time wise, we spend the majority of our time JOURNEYING rather than arriving

Given #2 – We have been taught to focus on the “BIG DAYS” and don’t think much of the average, in between days, with “nothing going on”

Given #3 – The only way to CREATE a Big Day is by doing intentional things on the average days that do not have your attention

Given #4 – Ego wants you to focus on outcomes (not 100% within your control) rather than your daily choices/actions/process (all within your control)

Because 1-4 are true, the RESULT is a life wasted by ignoring the now, over-focusing on the future & struggling. A life where joy waits on the coming of one of the sacred “BIG DAYS”.

Stop It!

Let’s take each Given one by one so you really get it. Once you make this shift, you can learn to see value in what you have right now, life itself. Daily, average, nothing going on but the rent, life itself is valuable.

Given #1 – We spend more time JOURNEYING rather than arriving

I’ll use my own life. Let’s see. Big Days? Graduated college, graduated law school, got married, got divorced, won a National Championship in Law school, won some national championships in racquetball, went to the U.S. Olympic Facility to train, won some big legal cases. Okay that’s a good sample.

Just those Big Days span 1995 -2011. 16 years. Those 16 years covered 5,840 days of my life. And we’ll say that list gives me 13 Big Days.

Score: Journey 5,840 Days vs. Big Day “Destinations” 13 Days

.00222% of my life was the ARRIVING part and all the rest was the travel, the getting there! P.S. You are going to have the same numbers!

Given #2 – We have been taught to focus on the “Big Days” ONLY

Look how TINY a part of your whole life the BIG DAYS really are. Put them in perspective.

If someone offered you a promise for your life where all your average days would be really happy and your BIG DAYS would be really miserable, you’d be a FOOL not to grab that deal.

Look at the numbers. Are you accepting average for thousands of days while trying to get AMAZING for .00222% of your time here?

We spend 4 years (well, we used to spend 4 years in College, I don’t know what the hell kids are doing these days strolling through in 6…) in undergrad all for 1 day. To be fair, all for like 2 hours and you hope they pronounce your name correctly!

As a former divorce lawyer, I used to laugh when I heard of the BIG weddings with young people. Divorce lawyers used to joke about those. We noticed that the grander the wedding, the bigger and sooner the divorce!

The more everything was about the ONE BIG DAY, the less is was about the 12,775 more days in your future that makes up 35 years.

Be honest. What BIG DAY are you driving for right now? My Arbonne women it’s “get my Mercedes Day” or “walk the stage as National Vice President Day”. These are SINGLE days in a life pushing and pulling and struggling for that SINGLE moment.

No one would argue that the BIG DAY isn’t amazing or important, it’s just what are you giving up on a daily basis to get to that one single moment?

Paradox: Given #3 – The only way to create a Big Day is by focusing on your daily choices YET with Given #4 the ego encourages you to keep your focus off the daily and ONTO the outcome (the Big Day)

Here is something so simple and subtle it is easy to overlook. We all want the BIG DAYS but the only way to create one of those is by choosing well on your average days.

Problem? Focusing on the outcome tends to bring anxiety over when it’s coming and how to get it. That energy distracts and keeps you from getting what you are after. And when you stay fixated on your “outcome” you are actually rejecting your current reality.

Your ‘future only’ focus says, right now things aren’t as good and I prefer to live for that magic day in the future.

I used to do this by focusing on Getting Married and then focusing on the day my mate would “find me”. My BIG DAY focus was, where is he? Where is he? That was the same as me saying there was something “wrong” with my single life.

My craving/pushing/longing energetically supported the fact that HE wasn’t here yet, so I was stuck in that place. Nothing resisted can be shifted!

My life is so good right now that an AMAZING man who offers a lot but not all that I want, is a NO. I am no longer a slave to future BIG DAYS. I am in my joy on those “average” days that make up our lives.

Think about it, if you can be in joy on the “average days”, doesn’t that mean you have found a way to experience 99.778% of your life happy?

And doesn’t THAT mean, that daily happiness will help you focus on your daily choices without future distraction…so you just made it possible to create those 13 BIG DAYS too?

I used to “know” the statement – life is about the journey, not the destinations.

Now, I believe it and believing it has made all the difference. It’s shifted my priority to ensuring that the place I spend MOST of my time (99% of it) is happiest and I’m content to let the BIG DAYS be built from that.

I can trust my future outcomes because on a daily basis I am focused on my choices from a place of joy, not striving or struggle.

Put your energy into the journey and the destination will take care of itself.

I want this knowledge to become a deep belief for you Alpha.

Tanya Recommends:

Getting the right amount of sleep tonight. Make it happen.

Stop giving to everyone else, everywhere else and get yourself to bed. In fact, go 10 minutes early and allow yourself time to review your day and focus on anything good and forgive yourself for anything you DON’T want to take into tomorrow.

Make it happen. Or as Jean-Luc Picard would say, Make it so…

Make a list of your BIG DAYS from the last 10-20 years and then compare that number against the number of days you LIVED.

Where should your focus or energy be?

On the super tiny number of BIG DAYS or the huge number of regular days?

Where attention goes, energy flows. I would have you re-route your attention to making your “average” days a joy. Bring your focus to your life as it is right now and each day. In that process, you will deepen your appreciation & respect for your life RIGHT NOW, no BIG DAYS required! Your gratitude will shift from looking for BIG DAYS to EVERYDAY. When that shift occurs, miracles will become more common in your life.