Slow Down and Enjoy the Journey

When we are in a hurry, we force solutions. We force what we think should happen, to happen. And the outcome isn’t always ideal. Yes, we want to work towards the results. But we have to do our part: do the work, and then let go of the results. They will either happen, or they won’t. But we have to slow down and enjoy the journey.

I am the last person who should tell you to slow down and enjoy the journey. I have come to realize I am so destination based. I love the end result. And I want to end result NOW.

I grew up snowboarding, and I loved riding the lift to the top of the mountain and then cruising back down the snow-covered slopes to the bottom, and then doing it all again. But when I got the opportunity in my teenage years to go wake boarding – basically the water equivalent of snowboarding – I didn’t enjoy it at all. 

After I finally got up on the wake board in the water (and that took a minute, let me tell you), I remember thinking as I was cruising over the water, “What now? Where is the end?” It was like I couldn’t understand how to enjoy wake boarding because in my mind, it had no natural stopping point. You just went until you felt like stopping. I needed a starting point and an end point, mostly because I wanted to get to the end point as fast as possible.

And I have found so often in my life, that I struggle with any task that feels equally arbitrary. If it doesn’t have a natural stopping point or ending or destination – how do you do it? What’s the point? How do you keep going without an end on the horizon?

I have been in sales for almost 18 years, the majority of that time spent in outside sales going out to see my customer base. It took me years to understand that I was doing my job by showing up and nurturing and growing the relationships, even if I didn’t walk out of each account with a purchase order in hand every time I left. That would have been the end game, the stopping point, the signal that I had completed the task. Instead, I had to learn to trust the process and know that I was doing my job, even if it didn’t yield immediate results. I had to trust that I had to put in the work and the results would follow – sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.

I have learned over time that the process is the important part. Sure, I still want the end result – I want to get to the bottom of the mountain, to get the order, to be debt free, to lose ten pounds, to whatever – but it’s the time that I invest in something that is what really matters. The day in and day out, hours spent, sometimes years spent, working on something – that’s what really matters. It’s through the process that I can practice discipline, integrity, consistency and more.

So here’s my reminder to you today: Slow down and enjoy the journey. Everything takes time. Nothing happens overnight except the rise and fall of the moon. But one foot in front of the other, one day at a time, we get closer and closer to our end game.

Until next time,

Jeri Austin