When you are headed somewhere, whether in a car or in life, you have two potential statuses. You can be on your journey or at your destination. Which one is a better target upon which to focus your attention?

When you set a goal, you are setting a destination. In order to reach that destination, you must begin a journey from your current location. This may be a long journey, with many intermediate places along the way, or a very short journey, the shortest being a single step.

On a very short journey, there is little difference between the journey and the goal. There is not much upon which to focus your attention along the way, so on very short journeys the focus is really the same… it has to be on the destination because there’s so little journey.

On long (or even medium) journeys, however, there is a significant difference between focusing on the destination and focusing on the journey. If you focus on the destination, it’s like a race… you’ll probably get there faster, but miss out on things along the way. You may miss out on other opportunities and paths that are available to you, possibly including alternative paths to the same destination, which might be more enjoyable, or even faster than your original path. You may even find out along the way that you are no longer interested in reaching the original destination… you might find something better to head toward.

There are other benefits to focusing on the journey, as well. One of these is that you can be aware of where you are now, and enjoy the scenery. Another is that you feel less urgency, and therefore less stress. You have more opportunities in general… to meet new people, have new experiences, learn new things, and to gain enjoyment from each of these things.

So focusing on the journey brings these benefits in exchange for less certainty and potentially less speed in reaching your goals. It’s your choice… if you want to focus your energy on quickly reaching specific goals, then you will probably do so more rapidly and will have a more certain path. If you want to focus on the journey, you will gain many more opportunities and be able to more easily reassess your path to see if the original destination is still where you wish to go. If you enjoy personal growth, and if you are reading my web site you probably do, then the choice should be obvious.