Imagine a destination you want to reach. Get it clear in your mind–figure out exactly why you want to go there, map out the path from where you’re standing, memorize the roads you need to travel, what hotels you’re going to stay at along the way. Calculate how much gas you’ll need and where along the way you’ll buy it.
Are you there yet?
Of course not. Calculations and mapping and getting clarity for your vision are important, but at the end of the day, you’re still right where you started. You are going to have to get into the car, make all of those turns, buy all of that gas, check in at those hotels. You’ve got to put in the work. You’ve got to actually go through the process.
Most people don’t love the process. They love the vision, the dream. Some people even love calculating the path, decoding the hustle required to get there. Most people don’t want to go through anything, they want to live their lives as if everyday was a blissful vacation. Who can blame them? The process to reach any destination worth going to is hard and painful and uncomfortable–who could possibly love that?
Game Changers do. Across the board, universally, we love the process.
We know there is more value in the process than in the destination. Falling in love with the process makes you a better, stronger person before you ever reach an achievement milestone, and continues to make you better after you’ve reached it.
Every step you take and everything that happens as you go through the process helps make you the person you want and need to be when you reach your goal. Trust me, you don’t want to magically teleport to your destination. There’s no joy at the destination that you don’t bring with you. There’s no pile of happiness waiting for you anywhere. The only happiness and fulfillment you experience is what you build yourself along the way. If life was effortlessly the way you wanted it to be all the time, you’d get sick of it. You’d be seeking something to challenge you–that’s the beauty of the human spirit. Don’t believe me? Check out the bankruptcy and suicide rates for people who win millions in any lottery.
People frequently confuse LIKE and LOVE, but Game Changers know the difference. Everyone likes and desires things that are pleasant, that feel good, that are enjoyable. That doesn’t make those bad things–they can be great, they can trigger and motivate us to accomplish amazing things. Reaching for things is incredible–life should be enjoyed! Game Changers LOVE the things, people, and places that are going to help make us whole, help make us better, help bring us further to our goals. Game Changers know that LOVE and PROCESS are synonyms.
If you choose to love the process, you will always reach your destination.
Think about it and rearrange your vision to account for the process. Do you want a nice body? Then your destination should be becoming a person who loves working out. A person who loves working out always has a nice body, and your destination is that much richer for all the other benefits working out will bring you–a healthy body, a strong one, a body you can enjoy and do so many incredible things with. Want to be a punctual person? Your destination is becoming dependable, reliable, having everything you need together so you are prepared and out of the door. You won’t just be punctual, you’ll be early.
You won’t like every road that you have to go down to reach your destination, but you can love getting through it. You can love what that road is teaching you about yourself, or even how much faster you can push yourself to get through it.
It might seem more comfortable not to take the first step, much less push yourself through the dark and ugly roads to your destination. You might feel like it would be better to just stay where you are, to not make any big moves. That sense of security is fake. We are all moving, all the time. Nothing gets to stand still; we are either moving up or moving down.
Nothing in nature is allowed to be comfortable. Think of a sapling, growing and changing through every season, year after year, until it becomes a mighty oak. This twenty, thirty, forty foot tree–do you know what happens to it when it stops growing? It dies. When nature sees something that has stopped growing, stopped contributing, she kills it.
You’re going to be moving one way or another–now you get to choose.
Choose to love the process.
Rodney