Enjoy the ride
Taking delight in the journey takes confidence. Seth Godin
What would it take to keep a great attitude no matter what?
How can you take pleasure in a day which doesn't go as planned? How do you stay on the upside of life when circumstances don't go the way you anticipate?
Certainly when tragedy occurs, surviving any given moment can be hard, and those aren't the days I'm referencing.
No, I mean how to you stay positive during the garden variety, stuck-in-traffic, broken-computer, kid-is-home-sick, raging-hay-fever, dog-is-a-mess, not-NEARLY-enough-sleep, jeans-are-too-tight, to-do-list-is-too-long, work-is-hard, kind of day?
What do you do when the day is over and you're not where you expected to be?
There's power in expectations and if you're even a smidgen like me, my expectations are almost always focused on results - on destinations.
A few months back I told Billy I was feeling "overwhelmed" by my work and he replied (as gently as possible),
"Well then you're not doing it right."
Excuse me?
"You've always said failure is much more common than success in your industry, so the journey may be all you get. If you're not enjoying that, then you're probably doing it wrong."
Point taken.
Actually, I mulled over this idea for weeks and what I realized was I wasn't delighting in the journey because I was feeling insecure in the outcome. I wasn't confident enough to say the journey is enough.
The. Journey. Is. Enough.
I'll probably never get a tattoo (I'm missing a toe so there isn't a better story to be made on this body!), but if I did those could be words I use.
In fact, these days when people ask me "how work's going?" I try to say OUT LOUD, "I'm enjoying the process," because that is the truth. Will I ever see the results I want?
Maybe. Maybe not.
But the results, I'm learning, are beside the point.
My goal is to choose delight in whatever the day holds: the jammed-printer, not-enough-memory-on-the- hard-drive, rainy-or-sunny day.
Where do you need to say the journey is enough?
Work? Home? Parenting? Singleness? Marriage? Friendship?
Wherever it is, I hope you'll have the confidence to choose delight.