Have you ever felt like you just keep going around in circles? You think you’re moving forward, and then you may get discouraged if you’re not seeing the progress happening fast enough. Science proves that the fastest way to get from point A to point B is in a straight line. And in life, many people want to go in that straight line to their “destination,” or goal. We call the road between point A (where we are now) and 
point B (our end goal), “The Journey.” If we want to get the most out of life, we’re called to focus more on the journey than the end destination.
But even when we know that we should appreciate the journey, I’ve noticed that many of us still innately want to go in that straight line. We may get frustrated in the crooks and bends that come along the way. So let’s pause and reflect for a second. If life is a journey, why are we rushing through it? Do you really want to take your life journey in that straight line? Do you really want to get to your final destination as fast as you possibly can?
Have you ever felt like you were enriching your life, doing all the right things, on the metaphorical “Cloud 9,” only to be knocked on your butt a few days later? I sure have. It seems life has this ebb and flow to it like the waves of an ocean, we go up, we come down, we go up, we come down. For every action, there’s an opposite and equal reaction. Or a pendulum swing. I’ve noticed this in business often. For example, we need everyone in the office, then we see the value of giving employees the flexibility to be remote, then we pull them into the office again so they can capitalize on the power of groupthink, only to run out of office space, allowing employees to go remote again. The dress code does this too. Business, casual, business, casual. Data: dive deep, come high, dive deep, come high.
Don’t like something now? Sit it out, this too will pass. Love something? Unfortunately this too with pass. We don’t sit in the highs and the lows, we swing through them. I heard a saying once, “Praise and blame, it’s all the same.” As discouraging as that may be when praise came, it made a huge impact on my ability to anticipate the downswings and better handle the blame when it inevitably came too.
What if taking the path of the circle might actually be the more exciting path? Or maybe you prefer the more serene wave if you wish to avoid the extreme ends of the pendulum swing. Either way you choose, the fastest path may not be the right path for you.
Let’s look at it from a different perspective. Think about a road trip. Sure you can get from Dallas to LA in 20 hours, and that’s a long road trip. But did you know that if you add in just 3 hours to that drive, you can see the majesty of the Grand Canyon along the way? That’s quite a different experience, and I’d venture to suggest the journey may be even more enjoyable and peaceful going the longer route.
But despite the fact that life and nature both show us there’s an ebb and flow, we seem to be programmed to want to go in a straight line. If we don’t step back and watch ourselves, we drive towards the destination as fast as we can get there.
The key is that once you are on the momentum train, it’s exhilarating, but you have to take a step back sometimes and pause to ensure you’re headed in the direction you want to go. Swing forward. Pause and reflect. Make a mistake. Get knocked down. Learn from it! Enjoy every moment of the journey.
But what’s beautiful, truly beautiful, about this journey is that it may seem like you are traveling in circles and getting nowhere, but if you take a step back and look at it from afar, you will see that the whole time, it wasn’t a circle at all!
You have been moving in an upward spiral.
MintROI 