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Category: Enjoying The Journey

Flirting With Tickets

Published on April 30, 2022

The average pace of today’s world is fast.

Most of us are sprinting to and from and mostly because that’s what everybody else is doing.

It’s like when you’re on the highway and everybody is driving 69.5mph in a 55mph zone—you don’t want to be THAT guy (just me?).

The question is: are we running because we’re enjoying or because we’re trying to quickly get to a different place where the enjoying is supposed to happen?

Which makes me wonder: does enjoying ever sprint? Or does enjoying cruise so as to not miss a moment as life sprints by?

The Marathon Of Your Life

Published on February 16, 2022

Running a marathon is hard.

Taking one stride, however, is easy.

The reason marathons are hard is because they are composed of around 39,733 consecutive strides.

Taking that many strides in a row will take an incredible toll on even the most fit amongst us.

And to those who aren’t fit, prepared, or mentally calloused enough (as David Goggins would say)—taking that many strides in a row simply isn’t possibly.

Until it is.

See, most of us are smack in the middle of marathons right now.

They are the marathons of our life. For example:

  • We’re on day 47 of our 2022 goal streaks.
  • We’re on day 707 of managing our mental health amidst a global pandemic.
  • We’re on day _____ of our careers/educations (I’m on day ~6,022 of being a professional Martial Arts Instructor).

And we have a lifetime of strides ahead of us.

If we start running too fast on any of these days, we’ll impact our performance on the following days.

If we succumb to distraction and comfort and stop taking strides at all, we’ll never finish our marathons.

And while cheering other people on from the sidelines can be fun and rewarding—it pales in comparison to the joy and reward that comes from crossing the finish line ourselves.

The average person lives 25,915 days.

This is your marathon.

Once you identify what you want your strides to represent—your life’s task becomes easy.

Just one stride each day to contribute to the beautiful accumulation of strides that is your marathon.

And no sense in rushing to this ending (your death).

Better would be to find ways to maximally align with and enjoy each stride.

Godspeed.

Not In A Hurry

Published on January 5, 2022

Not in a hurry is an excellent sign of being committed to the process.

Being in a rush is an excellent sign of being committed to the destination.

Being committed to the destination without being committed to the process is an oxymoron of sorts. Because arriving to a destination isn’t possible without undergoing the process.

Which is precisely why so many people fail to arrive at their destinations.

They’re in a rush. They’re forcing things along. They’re definitely in a hurry.

The general goal seems to be to arrive without having to go through the work of traveling.

Which, of course, isn’t how arriving works.

What if, instead of trying to rush, force, hack, hurry, or expedite your way to a far and away destination—you found ways to make the goal more about enjoying the process?

Because the thing about rushing is that it implies you don’t want to be where you are or doing what you’re doing. It implies you’d rather be somewhere else (in a future fantasy scenario).

And the reality is, we’re going to spend the sweeping majority of our time traveling and only but a micro-fraction of it arriving. And to spend anything more than a moment in a state of misery, contempt, or hate is wasteful—let alone a few years (or *gulp* decades).

And so the question you should ask yourself is: am I enjoying the pace of my process or am I actually just rushing to arrive?

Because being in a rush might counterintuitively prove to be far more wasteful than not being in a hurry after all.

Pull vs. Push

Published on October 14, 2021

When you follow your curiosities, learning takes care of itself.

When you’re forced to be curious, learning needs to be taken care of.

When you believe strongly enough in a project or cause, working takes care of itself.

When you disbelieve in a project or cause, working needs to be taken care of.

When you give yourself a vision for the future, the days take care of themselves.

When you live without a vision for the future, the days need to be taken care of.

When you follow what naturally pulls you, you won’t have to push yourself all the damn time.

Arriving Isn’t Living

Published on September 8, 2021

How you get through the process is more important than how quickly you get through the process.

Most people default to thinking about the speed at which they can go from where they are, to where they want to be.

And the process quickly becomes irrelevant. All that matters is getting to “Point B.”

So they take short-cuts, Google “hacks,” subscribe to schemes—all so that they can arrive.

But, what quickly becomes evident is that arriving isn’t living. Arriving is ending.

It’s journeying that produces all of the reward. It’s the adventuring that counts.

It’s taking the scenic route, reading thick books, subscribing to long-term thinking ideas that reprioritizes the process as the main priority.

Because it is. Or, at least it should be.

For the “hows” of your process are what ultimately become the story of your life—not your arrivals.

Adventures > Chores

Published on February 27, 2021

“I don’t hold myself to longer hours; if I did, I wouldn’t gain by it. The only reason I write is because it interests me more than any other activity I’ve ever found. I like riding, going to operas and concerts, travel in the west; but on the whole writing interests me more than anything else. If I made a chore of it, my enthusiasm would die. I make it an adventure every day. I get more entertainment from it than any I could buy, except the privilege of hearing a few great musicians and singers. To listen to them interests me as much as a good morning’s work.”

Willa Cather, via MoveMe Quotes

If I was given the assignment of having to write a short-form essay every day for 423 days, I would call the assigner crazy. I would dread it. I probably wouldn’t make it past a week, let alone finish it. It’s how I felt whenever I was given a writing assignment in school.

While they were certainly effective at doing what they intended to do, there was still a palpable disconnect in how I felt about them. They weren’t organic to me. They weren’t self-driven explorations. They weren’t internally motivated. They were for a grade. They were rigid and formal. They were chores.

When I decided to write a few paragraphs about a quote every day starting on January 1st, 2020, it was like I was setting out on an adventure. I did it because I wanted to become a better writer. I did it because I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it for an entire year. I did it because I wanted to overcome the imposter syndrome I struggled with. I did it because I knew that if I wanted to become a serious writer, I would have to commit to a serious schedule.

And what a ride it has been.

Writing, for me, is one of the ultimate puzzles. There are over 170,000 words in the english language. And to spare both you and I some pretty ridiculous math, there are approximately an infinite number of ways those words can be combined into sentences, paragraphs, chapters, blogs, articles, and books—infinite.

And what fascinates me the most, is that within that mountain of words, lies the keys to understanding. Understanding people. Understanding places. Understanding things. Understanding ideas. And, most importantly, understanding ourselves. You just have to begin your adventure into the mountain on your own terms. And it will never be a chore.