Somewhere, early in my life, I inherited this belief system that life is all about achievement. What is your goal, have you achieved it, were you the best? Anything other than excellence was not ok. Whether this came from me, my parents, my Germanic background…. Who knows, and it does not matter. What mattered is that for many years, this became my belief system.
And as a result, I lived many years of my life trying to be the best, but just not getting there. Turns out that I was really good at applying myself and achieving outcomes when I put my mind to it. Yet even with the best of my efforts, second place was the best I got to…. So not good enough in my eyes and the eyes in my life that I believed mattered. And then I thought, perhaps I was just excellent at being good at many things, and even as I write this now, I can clearly see that I was trying to find a reason for me not being the best at something, so just a platitude.
I was so focused on trying to pacify my inner demons, that I disregarded my experiences, the people I met, my own emotional well-being and health, as well as the challenges I had worked so hard to overcome. It was all about the end goal. The trouble with the end goal is, that it is never the end goal. When you get there, the current goal does not matter. All that mattered was the new goal that I had to get to, the destination.
And then one day, on day two of the Inca trail and slowly walking the way to Dead Woman’s Pass, my roommate and fellow traveller on the trip, was the catalyst to a new way of thinking.
To give some context: I had not particularly trained for this trail, and the altitude issue had crept on me much slower than fellow travellers (living at almost 2000 metres above sea level clearly impacted me differently). I found myself huffing and puffing on the side of the mountain, remembering my dad’s words around dealing with altitude – walk as fast as you can breathe (or in my case as slow). Yet, I felt I was failing, not good enough, not keeping up. And yet, Sarah, my roomie, stuck by me. She helped me cope and her words “It’s about the journey, not the destination”, have forever changed me and the way I embrace myself and the world.
The key message for me
Don’t stress! it’s not about the destination, it’s about THE JOURNEY. Take the time to look back and see how far I have come, enjoy the scenery, the wildlife, the sky and the way the clouds wander in ever different patterns across it, the little potentially insignificant flower along the path, the interesting and diverse people I meet along the way. This is my journey, and if I need to take a break at every serpentine to take a mini sip of water and rest, that is ok. This is my journey, and mine alone. And that is all that matters.
I initially wrote the paragraph with you, and then changed it to I. This is still a challenge for me, and possibly always will be.
So here I stand and declare:
I am the owner of my life and I embrace the journey I am on.
Join me if you like
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