Enjoy the process

I learnt this hard way. It’s the journey and not the destination that teaches you life lessons. When was the last time you felt beautiful about the profession/carrier/institute or for that matter state you are in? Well, I am assuming most of you must have started running the horses in your mind to actually think of it. But don’t you think that this is something that should come naturally to your mind?

We live in a country that binds us towards certain norms and ethics. Since our childhood, we are compared with the other kids in the society and are expected to set people from our locality as our role models. We are categorised on the basis of making choices in our lives. In the process, we often tend to forget that our life is not just confined to the four walls of our society. Rather, those are the four walls we build for ourselves and never bother to climb it to experience the other side.

We all come from different backgrounds and have a different purpose in life. Some want to earn a lot of money and become rich, whereas some keep the money as the second choice and choose a path to live a simple life doing what they love. But the one thing which is common in both of this is the road that takes us to our destinations. There is absolutely nothing wrong with choosing something for ourselves as long as we don’t end up losing our own essence in the process.

Every road has its own kind of adventure, thrill, pitfalls, stops, mountains and tunnels. But every road has a beautiful ending because it takes us a step closer to our desires. Life might not become stable in the end, but it definitely becomes easier than before. Hence, it becomes even more important to stop, live and breathe every hurdle that leads us to the end of the tunnel. In the end, it’s the journey that will provide us with the satisfaction of achievement more than the achievement itself.

People often define success with money. But is money enough a parameter to define success? Stealing words of a mentor to define it for you. Your little act of kindness which brings a smile to someone’s face is a success. It’s not who wins at the end, it’s the one who performs the best because that’s where the real learning of life lies.

Giving an instance, during my small corporate tenure, I saw a lot of people using tricks to accomplish whatever they want in life. It might not be wrong on their part, but the value always drowses on those who put in their efforts. Every effort has a story, a ‘behind the scenes’ of a journey with twist and turns. It’s these turns which not only provides us with the direction to proceed but also gives us truckloads of lifetime memories to cherish and narrate upon for those going through the same.

Quoting the words of an Australian author, Viktor Frankl,

“Don’t aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.”

Never be afraid of getting stuck in Jurassic Park, because there is always a way out of the maze. It’s all about finding the right directions for these are the decisions that will show you where your real ikigai lies.

So live in the moment, shooting for the stars you never know you might end up being the one!