Journey or Destination? (How About Both?)

What matters more – your journey or your destination?

It’s a stupid question, really. It all depends on where you’re going, and how much you enjoy the process.

In a couple of months, I’m off to Blog World in Las Vegas. I’ve booked my flights. Rather than flying direct from London to Vegas, I’m changing planes to make the trip cheaper. Yes, the journey won’t be so fun – but te reason I’m going isn’t because I get a kick out of sitting in a metal tube for ten hours. I’m going for the destination: Blog World.

The journey/destination metaphor appears a lot in personal development advice: you’ve probably come across it before. Some folks think the key thing is to enjoy the journey – after all, you have to live through it (for months, years, even decades):

The purpose of goal setting isn’t to control the future. That would be senseless because the future only exists in your imagination. The point of goal setting is to improve the quality of your present-moment reality.

(Steve Pavlina, Personal Development for Smart People (book) – Amazon.com / Amazon.co.uk, p53)

Others focus on the destination – if you get to where you want to be, life’s gonna be a whole lot more fun:

Put reminders of this goal all over the place – your bedside table, your computer monitor, your rearview mirror. Whenever you take an action of any type, ask yourself if that action is helping you reach your goal. Is buying this unnecessary thing really helping me reach my goal? Is sitting on the coach vegetating really helping me reach my goal?

(Trent Hamm, The Simple Dollar (book) – Amazon.com / Amazon.co.uk, p47)

So who’s right? Who’s wrong?

We all are. Here’s the two basic mistakes – and most of us are making both of these simultaneously, in different aspects of our lives.

Mistake #1: Wandering Through Life (And Not Getting Far)

Let’s say you take the popular (and broadly good!) advice to go for your dreams and live out your passions.

You try out a lot of new things – and you enjoy them, but you don’t stick with most of them. You’ve got an attic full of junk which you don’t use any more: sports kit, a guitar, games, books you never read, gadgets and gismos…

You follow inspiration to see where it leads. You have fun, but there’s a nagging sense that you’re not having as much fun as you could. Often, you end up defaulting to what the people around you are doing. You find yourself very swayed by what other people think.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s good to wander. It’s great to have hobbies and interests which you enjoy purely for their own sake. Problems arise when you feel like all your exploring ends in a dead end.

• You’re stuck in a “meh” job which pays the bills, but doesn’t bring you alive
• You’ve taken a few courses or qualifications, but they’ve not led to anything
• You keep starting new projects (novels, blogs, paintings, business plans) – and never getting far from the starting line
• You often feel bored or listless, and all the entertainment you seek doesn’t seem to fulfil you

It’s a frustrating situation to be in. You feel like you should be enjoying things more, but nothing quite works. You may put a lot of effort into different projects and goals, but you never seem to achieve anything much.

Perhaps you react against this, and try to pull yourself towards a specific goal. That can end up looking like this:

Mistake #2: Racing to the Finish Line (And Not Enjoying It)

You’ve got a goal in mind – one which would make your life perfect. Maybe it’s a certain amount of money in the bank, or a particular career, or owning a small business. You know it’ll take a lot of hard work and long hours, but you’re certain that it’s going to be worth it.

The problem is, you find yourself pushing harder and harder – with a diminishing sense of joy and enthusiasm. Maybe you’re following some soulless get-rich-quick scheme in the hopes of hitting that £100,000 figure sooner. Or you’re scrimping and saving pennies to invest as much as possible so you can retire a couple of years earlier.

I’m all for concentrating on your goals (I even have a three-part series on goal setting and focus). But when the whole of life becomes about reaching some magical destination, the journey can end up being more boring than a long-haul flight when you’ve forgotten to bring a good book:

• You dread getting up in the morning to start yet another long day
• You’re cutting out sleep in order to work harder
• You tell yourself that it doesn’t matter that you’re miserable at the moment – you’re going to be happy once you reach your destination, damnit!
• The whole of your life is focused on achieving this one goal

This is a horrible way to live. Sure, we all go through tough patches and struggle against times of overwhelm. Every adventure involves the occasional bit of slogging. But life shouldn’t be a constant battle to keep moving forwards.

So how do you really get the most from life?

The Solution? A Great Journey to a Worthwhile Destination

This is easy to say but a heck of a lot harder to do. You need to figure out a worthwhile destination – one which truly matters to you (not to your dad, your best friend, or that guy on the television). But you need to mix that with a journey which really appeals to you – even if that’s not the fastest route.

Sometimes, your destination isn’t 100% clear. You know which way you’re going and roughly what it’ll look like when you get there – but you don’t have a step by step plan. That’s okay. The thing is, however detailed and precise your plan, there’s a very good chance that your journey is going to change your destination anyway.

Here’s what I mean.

When I was 18, I knew I wanted to make a living writing. I thought I wanted to do this by writing novels. I duly went and studied English Literature at university, not because I wanted an English degree, but because I loved reading and writing.

I had a brilliant three years, and no regrets.

And then I got a bit lost. I’d written a novel, but agents were showing minimal interest at best. I worked for a while. I tried other forms of writing. I got into blogging. And here I am now.

I do write for a living – but when I was 18, much of what I do now barely existed (paid blogging, for instance). Plus, I never thought I’d enjoy writing non-fiction – my only experience of it was with essays.

If you think back through your own life, there’ll be times when your journey changed you. It showed you new possibilities. It revealed some uncomfortable truths. (Maybe you realised you weren’t quite cut out to be a world class footballer, or a rock star.)

Your destination isn’t set in stone. Sure, sometimes it’s hard to get off a particular path – but it’s always possible to switch (even if it takes a bit of time and money).

On the other hand, you need a balance. Having a destination in mind makes the journey more worthwhile. It keeps you going through the tough, swampy bits so that you can get to the glorious view beyond.

If you’re journeying without a destination, pick something which isn’t too far away. Perhaps having £100,000 in the bank is so ridiculously out of reach that it doesn’t motivate you (I know that’s how I feel.) But having an emergency fund of £1,000 is realistic – and would give you peace of mind.

Your destination doesn’t have to be big and bold and glittery. You don’t have to be heading for Vegas. Your destination can be some little out-of-the-way goal which would make you feel awesome.

Where are you heading – this week? Are you enjoying the journey? Come and talk about it in the comments…