The Ambitious Journey
What sort of journey should we take, and with whom should we take it?
What, and with whom, are choices we face in each phase of our lives.
Young Adulthood
Adulthood
Middle Age
Elderhood
End of Life
More on the phases later. Today, I want to focus on the nature of the journey. Specifically, what I’ve learned from my choices from Young Adulthood through Middle Age.
From Part One… the characteristics of our journey.
Long Time Horizon
Daily Actions
Setbacks To Overcome
Guides & Mentors
The Goal Isn’t The Goal
Long Time Horizon
It took me decades of striving to realize the goal isn’t the goal.
The goal is to give ourselves a task that will create meaning around our lives.
By working towards our goal, we develop the themes of our narrative. Each of us will have our own themes. The ones that have resonated strongly for me include:
Everyone Has Hidden Talents
The Power of Compounding
The Value of Persistence
The Ability to Change
Shaping Reality Over Time
Inwardly focused, as a young adult. My goals were status driven. Meeting those goals in my 20s, I was drawn towards the unfinished business of my childhood and shifted to athletics.
Maturing as an individual, having found an identity that fit me better, my focus shifted towards connection and family:
Fall in Love
Create a Marriage
Have a Family
Lead my Family
Upskill my Kids
These are universal themes, challenging and deeply rewarding.
Love - Marriage - Family - Lead - Teach
The long, uncertain journey will require us to:
Change
Learn
Persist
Endure
…and if we pay attention then we may learn that our belief systems, and lack of patience with time, is what constrains performance.
Let’s say the same thing differently.
The Ambitious Journey will challenge our self-limiting beliefs. We will need to make a choice: do we hold on to past beliefs; or are we willing to try a new way of doing things.
Our big future goal can be a catalyst for positive change. Our desire, to achieve the goal, motivating us to endure the discomfort of change.
With time, we may discover that achieving goal wasn’t the goal.
Success being a process of positive transformation happening while we are undertaking our Ambitious Journey.
Change - Learn - Persist - Endure
Daily Actions
Another way the goal isn’t goal.
We are looking for a task where we can take action, daily.
One Positive Step, Daily
Achievement of the goal is out-there, in our future.
What’s real is today, and our task is to move ourselves a little bit towards our goal.
I know very few people who can maintain focus for five years. Even five years is not much time, fewer than 2,000 mornings. Ten years, fewer than 4,000 mornings.
As a young man, 1,000 mornings seemed massive. Nearing the end of Middle Age, my perception of time has shifted. 1,000 mornings is a small piece of my life. This shift, in the experience of time, is an advantage that age has over youth.
Each morning:
Move forward a little
Protect the ability to do the same tomorrow
Keep the rest of our lives in balance
It sounds simple, and it is.
When we embrace this approach, we will discover a need to simplify our lives. We will notice “the rest of our lives” is constantly presenting us with opportunities, distractions and drama.
Our Ambitious Journey keeps us focused on themes that are meaningful to us.
Setbacks To Overcome
By thinking big and choosing our goal, we have started the process of positive transformation.
We’re on our journey
We know it’s going to take thousands of days
Each morning, we want to take one positive step forward
Quite soon, we will encounter a recurring aspect of our journey.
Setbacks.
A memorable story from the late-1990s.
When I was training for my first Ironman triathlon, I suffered an ankle injury.
I felt like I had failed, that my goal was lost.
My coach congratulated me on becoming a “real athlete.”
I didn’t understand.
Why was I being congratulated for failing?
My coach explained that setbacks are a natural part of the process. It’s not possible to avoid setbacks.
We learn from them, change our approach and get back to work.
In my case, getting back to work led to me becoming an elite athlete. An outcome I couldn’t envision, when I was dealing with my ankle injury.
When faced with a setback, our task remains the same.
Persist
Move forward a little
Protect the future
Keep the rest of our lives in balance
Learn (!) the pattern causing the setback
Guides & Mentors
Learning is easier, and more fun, with the right people on our team. A team that includes students, peers and teachers.
Students - an opportunity to pay-it-forward by teaching what we’re learning on our journey.
Peers - teammates, helping us through our setbacks, getting us out-the-door when motivation wanes.
Teachers - role models, advisors, guides and mentors.
The best part of being a teacher is learning from students. Our roles shift as we move through life, and circumstances change.
What might we look for when selecting teachers and mentors?
Offer Correction Without Resentment - willing to speak uncomfortable truths.
Motivate Positive Change - an ideal quality in a spouse & life partner.
Exemplar - living a life we are OK being pulled towards - good/bad/ugly - our group passes everything to us.
Practitioner, rather than Expert - “having done” is superior to “knowing how.” There are elements of success that must be experienced.
Effective - sometimes a different person needs to give the same message. A wise teacher knows when to remove themselves from a situation.
It’s a package deal.
Each of these pieces come together to create the conditions for success.
But what is success?
As we scale the achievement ladder, far more people are “losing” than winning.
We will explore that next time.
We Are Free To Change At Any Time