Love the Journey, Not the Destination

In our culture, there are a lot of times throughout our lives that we are told to set goals. In school, we have an expectation to make goals of certain grades or accolades. In our careers, we have certain goals set by our company, our bosses and ourselves. From birth, our doctors and parents have certain goals spoken as milestones to accomplish from height, weight to walking and talking. Goal setting is now a multi-million dollar industry from self-help books, talk shows to privately run goal-setting programs. Most programs follow similar guidelines and I have personally been a part of one earlier this year that reaffirmed how I had already implemented goal setting in my life from my grade school and college days. The question that came up is how do I move forward keeping what is working, adding in what can work and give up what isn't working. In my recent goal-oriented program completion I got clear on the steps or "how" to create my goals. I added a layer of commitment to a daily habit of checking in. When I was reflecting post completion of my program the most important discovery I made was the "why" of my goals? It was a question I started to ask, why do I want to do x,y,z by x,y,z, what am I creating x,y,z for? When I got clear on the "why" of things some of my goals fell off the list as I realized they were goals I thought others expected of me, not what I wanted and they were not authentic to me.

For example, have you ever planned the best vacation, set up all the travel, thought of all the fun things you were going to do, did all the research, planned every last bit and then during the vacation that was supposed to feel like the top of your climb to Mt. Everest felt, well flat? I have found the most joy is not in the moments of the accomplishment or goal coming to fruition but in the journey, in the figuring things out, not everything unfolding exactly how you planned it but allowing it to unfold how it does and relishing in that process.

How can we bring this into our everyday life? Look at your why? Why do you want a better job? Why would more time off make you happy? Why would homeownership make you smile from the inside out? Celebrate daily, this can look like a daily gratitude list, or speaking your highs of the day to a friend or family member - hey pets are included here...:) Studies show that those of us that show daily gratitude is significantly more content. Studies also show that what we focus on we grow so if we can focus on what we are grateful for (it won't happen overnight) over time we can build and invite more positivity into our lives.

Let's make 2019 the year of daily gratitude and come back to the dinner table game of highs and lows, skip the lows and cheer for each other’s highs of the day.... we are all doing our very best each day. Cheers to you all and to the upcoming "why's" of your 2019!!!