Tag Archives: journey

Appreciation for what we have

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It’s easy to complain. To be frustrated. To want things to go faster, to want more, to want better.

It’s much harder to appreciate what we have.

Appreciation doesn’t require settling. It doesn’t mean we don’t strive, it doesn’t mean we don’t have desires. It means we acknowledge that what we have now is good. Not ‘good enough’… good.

What do we have to be thankful for? How can we show our appreciation to others? How can we share our gratitude for what we have?

If all that matters is what’s next: the next plateau, promotion, or praise for a job well done… then we aren’t being present.

What are we lucky to have, grateful to experience, fortunate enough to share? What can we appreciate about our experience right now? Because if we can’t figure that out right now, we probably aren’t going to figure it out when we reach our next target or goal. We will just be looking forward to the next step instead.

Meanwhile there is opportunity to enjoy the journey, the moments along the way… and not just the next destination on a long path of next destinations.

Is it really harder to show appreciation, or do we just not spend enough time practicing?

The road to here

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Sometimes you meet someone and their journey through life intrigues you. They share a glimpse of their history and you realize that you can’t really fathom what it would have been like to have had their experiences. You can hear of defining moments of good or bad luck, or even seemingly minor choices that end up with very significant consequences. Moments that alter a single life or many lives.

One interesting note is that it seems people who experience great hardships are often open to sharing them more openly than you would expect. I had one such encounter yesterday when I met a friend of a friend. Within minutes of meeting him I heard a story from his past that was from a dark part of his life, and so profoundly different from anything that I’d ever experienced that I felt I was listening to a movie plot, not an actual story from someone’s experience.

Sorry, I won’t be sharing the story. It’s not my story to tell. But it got me thinking about the road to here. About how every person is on a completely different journey. Each of us carrying with us the the successes and also the emotional as well as physical baggage that shaped us.

How different my journey is from someone born the same time as me in another part of the world… If I were to take a snapshot of the lives of myself and 8 others born at the same instance, I’d probably be in the top 1/3 financially today. I’d also be in the top 1/3 of those lucky to have a privileged path to my current life… with hardships that do not compare to the bottom 1/3, 3 people sharing my birthday, my birth second, but far less fortunate than me.

I think there is something therapeutic about hearing the stories of others. Appreciating that someone’s path is one you’d rather not have travelled is humbling. There isn’t judgment, just an appreciation that you had your own path, your own road that you travelled. And while the road can seem challenging, so many others face challenges you can’t imagine.

It’s wonderful to share the road, every now and then, with someone who has taken a completely different journey than you. To hear of their path to here and now, and to understand that we have a lot to appreciate about our own journey.

What are your defining moments on your road to here?

You can’t have both

Sometimes you have to choose. You reach a fork in the road and you have to make a choice. Too often kids try to take two paths at the same time. They want the benefits of two competing options and so they try to do everything. Two sports with game times on the same day is a perfect example, but there are many more ways they try.

The hardest thing to tell a kid that wants to ‘do it all’ is to just pick one. Sometimes it’s a good life lesson to have them try both paths, but sometimes it’s better to draw a hard line and say ‘you have to choose’. Sometimes trying both means being successful in neither.

Successful people don’t spread themselves too thin. They don’t try to be the best at everything. They don’t half-commit to more things than they can handle. For a kid, sometimes a guiding hand is needed, and an ultimatum. As an adult it’s about drawing those lines yourself. It’s about being able to say ‘No’. It’s about understanding that you can’t always add more and still add value.

Sometimes the choice needs to be either/or, not both.

Measuring success

Pull out a ruler and measure how happy you are. Start a stop watch to measure your success. So many people measure success by their ability to achieve goals, but many of these same people reach their goals only to realize the goal wasn’t enough, they need more:

  • You won a tournament, but you still aren’t world champion.
  • You made your first million, now you need to make 10 million.
  • You a ran a personal best time, what’s the next goal?
  • Target reached? Look ahead to yet another target you haven’t yet achieved.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to be better. Nothing wrong with creating smaller targets on a path to larger targets. It’s good to have goals that push you to be your best. But what happens when you reach a final target? Is there always one more target to add? Is there always one more achievement you haven’t measured up to yet?

Maybe. And that’s ok, because that drive is what makes you so successful. But what does success feel like? Is it a sense of achievement or a sense of never being enough? When you hit a critical target on your journey ‘to’ success does the celebration feel great, or empty?

Who helped you along the way. You did you hurt or lose along the way? How much do these other people matter? How much of your time was focussed on your targets versus the people that helped you reach them? What else did you have to sacrifice?

Is success measured by what you did, or how you feel about it, or how others perceive you? What does success look like and feel like to you? How do you measure success?

How long does it last?

Who else benefited?

Where does happiness or fulfillment fit in? What achievements really matter? And how do you really measure these things?

Take a moment and celebrate where you are right now. Maybe, just maybe, success is reaching a point where you don’t have to do more to feel good? Maybe, just maybe, success is not a destination you haven’t yet reached… because if every measure of success has another target ahead of it, you’ll never feel successful enough. I may or may not know you, but I’m willing to bet you deserve more than that. If you don’t feel successful, maybe you are measuring the wrong things.

There are many ways

I love this Chinese proverb:

There are many ways to the top of a mountain, but the view from the summit is the same.

It reminds me that we are all on our own journey; that we don’t have to follow a single path. It reminds me that some people have to work harder than others, and some have to face hardships that others don’t. But we are all seeking happiness or success.

It makes me think about all the different religions, and how they have similar goals. And it makes me realize that one’s faith is not as important as the path they take to their belief’s version of heaven. I have met faithful people in different religions who walk a virtuous path, and I have similarly met people of different religious beliefs who are less virtuous, less caring, generous, or kind… yet they all claim to be heading towards a similar metaphorical summit.

We all walk our own path. Sometimes we share that path with others. Sometimes we walk alone. Sometimes people are walking together and feel alone. Sometimes when we are alone we still feel like we are not alone, I think this can be achieved by self-confidence or by faith. But faith in what? Faith in a belief system that says, “Only through this faith can you reach the summit”?

There are many faiths that set people on virtuous paths. There are many secular people who choose to be virtuous without faith or organized religion. If each of these different people live a good life, are they not heading to the same or similar summits? Do they not deserve the same view?

How many paths are the ‘right’ path? Can there only be one? I doubt it. People who follow the same path don’t all make it to the summit, but community, and family, and friends can certainly make the journey easier. Yet virtue isn’t just about caring for those like you, with similar beliefs and attitudes. Virtue doesn’t spring from being exclusionary. And virtue doesn’t require faith.

There are many ways to the top of a mountain, but the view from the summit is the same.

I wish tolerance and acceptance of others had a greater role in religion. I wish different faiths could see the value in learning about each other’s path, and that people of different faiths learned to take their journeys alongside each other. This seems to happen more often in spite of faith rather than because of it. Or it happens in response to tragedy, but not in everyday life. Yet everyday life is the journey, is the path. Are we not better off believing that we are all on the same mountain, heading to the same summit? Can we not all share the same view when we get there?

Failure is a frame of mind, not an outcome

I’ve written a lot about learning and failure. In a post titled, Learning Through Failure vs Failing to Learn, I said,

“When we talk about learning from failure, we are not actually talking about failure, we are talking about perseverance, and resilience, and tenacity. We are talking about coming up to resistance and unplanned outcomes and working through them to achieve a goal. We are talking about students learning significantly more than if everything went their way.“

Listening to many students at Inquiry Hub, you hear them talk about this in an amazing way. They share the very ethos behind this idea:

For anyone that didn’t bother to watch these two short clips, here is what Thia said in the second one,

“Inquiry projects aren’t about always being successful. It’s about trying something new, learning new skills, creating something. It isn’t always about being the best at it, or succeeding in it. You might have a failed inquiry, and that’s completely ok. It doesn’t always have to be a success for it to be a good quality project. It’s all about the process.”

What’s interesting is that if you don’t understand this idea, it sounds like accepting failure is ‘OK’. If you don’t recognize that students are talking about putting themselves ‘out there’ and trying something beyond their comfort zone, then it sounds like they are giving themselves a participation badge for just showing up. But if you truly understand and embrace the idea of learning through failure, you aren’t talking about failure at all.

Elon Musk just had a rocket explode upon landing and called it a success because of the data they collected.


I’m sure there are people who get this. I’m also sure there are people who laugh, “Ha, you call that a success? What a loser.”

A real loser is one who doesn’t try. A real loser is one who gets an outcome they don’t want and quits. A real loser is someone that makes excuses rather than steps up to make things right.

People who do epic things, and people who try epic things and don’t succeed, understand that failure is a frame of mind, not an outcome. They understand that learning is a journey, not a destination.