Why The Journey Is More Important Than The Destination

|Everyone wants to turn their dreams into reality. We all have dreams and are on our own path to reach that destination. But have you ever felt empty inside, even after achieving your goal? That's because the actual fun in life is about the journey, not the end result. I will tell you why the journey is more important than the destination in this article.

Please note: This collaborative article does not contain healthcare or therapeutic advice. If you are concerned about your health or well-being, speak with a health professional or visit your nearest medical facility in an emergency.

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Who am I?

Before we begin, I would like to introduce myself shortly. I am Jakob Anderson, the owner and main writer of my blog and website "Soul Tribe". My mission is to help other people with their mental and physical well-being. I also want to spread spiritual awareness, because I believe that through spirituality and knowing ourselves, we can finally find peace again. That's why I have decided to collaborate with Heather LeGuilloux today and decided to write this post on her lovely and helpful blog.

Why The Journey is More Important Than the Destination

"Success is a journey, not a destination. The doing is often more important than the outcome." ~ Arthur Ashe

​Whether it is wanting to be successful at your job and working on your career, finally buying your dream house, wanting to be in a passionate and healthy relationship, or finding peace and taking care of yourself. We all have our dreams, our goals. Without them, we wouldn't be the person we are today. The person with the burning determination, decisiveness, and passion for putting in the work to enjoy the fruits life has to offer in the future.

It is self-explanatory, that we want to reach our goals as fast as possible. So what does the average person do? They rush. They try to reach their goal as fast as possible, only to be disappointed by a certain realization at the end of their journey.

"I have achieved my goal, but why do I feel so empty?"

Many people feel that way once they realize, that their journey is over. That's the point where we realize, just how much working and striving all the time to finally get to where we are actually meant to us. That's why I will tell you these lessons I learned about focusing on the journey so that you can avoid these mistakes.

1. Rushing to your goal leads to more problems.

Who doesn't want to reach true peace and self-knowledge as fast as possible? Or maybe you desire more materialistic things, like the dream house and car, you always wanted to get. But what if I told you, that rushing to your goal, just makes you more open to making mistakes?

Let's say, you want to cook for your spouse and children before they arrive home from school, while you have to clean the entire home and buy groceries for later. Everyone would be stressed out and think about how it would be like, to finally finish all of their chores and relax in the sun, while eating some ice cream outside. But when you try to rush, you make more mistakes. The meal suddenly tastes bad, you forgot to get some of the groceries in the market and you didn't thoroughly clean the house.
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All of this wouldn't have happened if you were patient enough and focused on the journey to your goal. If you focused on the present moment and the journey, you would have been cooking with more attention and love. You also wouldn't forget any groceries, because you are attentive enough. And finally, you would have examined your house more clearly to clean everything you have to, instead of being careless.

Related: ​5 Tips for a Positive Mindset

2. Reconnecting with yourself is more important than the constant spurt of doing something.

How many of us try to do something all the time, although there is no progress to be made? Do you ever just stare at your computer, when you have to finish a project but nothing ever comes out? It seems like the spark of creativity you had just disappeared. But the truth is, that you aren't connected to yourself. We get so caught up in trying to reach our destination, that we force ourselves to do something although we aren't connected to ourselves.

As you know by now, you have to reconnect to yourself to reach your goal successfully, but how do you do that? You have to focus on the simpler parts of your journey to reconnect with yourself. Instead of looking at what the final outcome should look like, we should focus on other things that are beautiful and also inspire us. There are many helpful things on our journeys that remain unnoticed because we are so caught up with the result. But once we start to focus on the journey and take a step back, to enjoy the simpler things in life, we become happier and more at peace with ourselves.
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"On your journey, don't forget to smell the flowers. Take time out to notice that you're alive." ~ Ray Fearon

3. True joy in life is found in the adventure itself.

I remember every time I finish something big, like a project, I feel so empty afterward. The same goes for whenever I finish watching a great show, I am sure you had a similar experience too. We get so caught up in the process of doing and finally finishing it, that we forget that what we are doing is truly the fun part of our journey.

The next time you are on your own "adventure" you should take a step back and understand that the doing part is more enjoyable than reaching the end of your adventure.

The bad mistake I did at an early age.

Being human means making mistakes from time to time. And just like you, I am simply another ordinary person that believes in the good of others. However, I am not perfect. I did a lot of mistakes in my past, and grew from them, by learning from my mistakes. And because I don't want you to suffer the same outcome like I did, I will tell you the story of younger me. The 17-year-old college student, who became too stressed and burnt out from desperately trying to meet the requirements for a psychology study at his favorite university.

I used to be very interested in psychology and mental health back then. Finding out, why we suffer from our negative thoughts and emotions, where they come from, and what we can do against them, fascinated me. That's why when I was in the last year of school, I figured out, that I wanted to become a therapist. Too bad that the grades I needed for a psychology study were a bit too high for me. But that didn't stop me. I used to be a very ambitious person and I would still say that I am ambitious today, just not perfect.

Young me believed, that if I worked hard enough to get better grades, I might actually make it to meet the requirements. But I didn't know, that I focused on my goal too much and neglected my mental health and the people around me.

I still remember vividly, how I slowly distanced myself from everyone and only had one thing in my mind. I was studying for school, while my friends were outside having fun. I felt bad after turning them down every time they invited me to do something, but I just had to pour my heart into my chance of success. I slowly realized, how being alone and studying all the time made me quite lonely. And to top it off, my stubborn self decided to focus on the goal to such an extent, that I rarely took pauses to enjoy myself. But I did see some improvements in my grades. I got closer to reaching the necessary grades, but my mental health slowly deteriorated.

My health spiraled down into depression and I started to burn out from all the constant learning. This continued for half a year until I finally gave up. Yes, it's true. I was so done that I gave up on my dream to become a therapist. Needless to say, I still graduated with a superb qualification. It just wasn't enough to apply for studying psychology at a university.

You may ask yourself now, what does this have to do with focusing on the journey? Why would concentrating on the journey change so much about the outcome and my health? The answer is simple, it's about taking a break and appreciating where you got, instead of rushing it and learning as much as possible in a very short amount of time.

First of all, this situation wouldn't have been so bad for my health, if I went out with my friends more often to have some fun in life. Through giving myself breaks and experiencing other things in life, I stop focusing on my destination and the desperate desire to rush my journey to get there. Secondly, if I actually reconnected to myself more often and stopped forcing myself to do as much as physically possible, I would have achieved more positive results over a longer period of time. I tried to accomplish as much as possible and didn't look out for myself and how my body felt during the progress.

And finally, if I enjoyed the process and the journey more, by being in the present moment, the outcome might have been different. But the truth is, that I would not have been here, without my mistakes. That's why I don't have any regrets and instead learned from the experience to become a better person.

In the end, I found another way to help people become healthier and happier in life. To be honest, I never expected to go down this road, but I am now a blogger. A blogger who is trying to help people in whatever way I can, but especially with mental health problems. I hope this article helped you understand why you should slow down and focus on your individual journey instead of your goal.

If you want to read more of my posts, please click the following link, to get to my website the "Soul Tribe". Thank you for reading and see you soon!

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Related: ​How to Challenge Limiting Beliefs in 3 Easy Steps

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