By Drew Morrison in ⚔️ Personal Development — May 13, 2023

Your Journey Matters More Than The Goals

Become a better version of yourself through your personal journey.

There are hundreds of books on the market that talk about goal setting. You should have S.M.A.R.T. goals, the five C’s, the four R’s, or any other acronym that you could make up and sound like you’re dialed into setting goals.

While having a structure around the goals you set for goals is important, you need to know why you are setting them.

We are told that we need to have a “why” for setting our goals. Sure, having a “why” is important. It’s great to know that you want to lose 20 lbs to be in better shape and look better.

However, that isn’t as important as the journey you will take towards improving yourself.

When You Choose A Goal That’s Difficult, Personal Growth Is Required

When you set a goal to work towards something, you need to understand that you might need to change as a person. If you want to be in the best athletic shape of your life you will need to sacrifice that side of you that’s lazy and would rather eat pizza and watch sporting events.

If you have a goal that doesn’t require you to go on a journey of personal growth, was it really that difficult or worthwhile? That means you already had the skillset before to do it.

I know this from the past when I set a goal many years ago to run an ultra marathon. One day, I signed up for one; honestly, I didn’t train for it. I ended up showing up to the race and making it through with some extra form of grit that I was able to dial up for that one day but I wasn’t proud of it.

I wasn’t proud of it as an accomplishment because I know I didn’t do my best to train for it. There wasn’t a long-term struggle. The only thing I gained from that journey was knowing I could make it through a 50-mile ultra but nothing else about me had changed.

A few years later, I signed up for a 100-mile ultra which would be the furthest I have ever run. It kicked my ass. I made it to mile 63 because I was missing the cutoff. Now, I’m making sure that I train hard for the next one. I need to pour myself into it and know I gave it my best.

Become The Hero Of Your Journey

Do you have anything that you want to achieve but have resisted the call for years?

What steps do you need to make today to start making that journey?

Remember that there is no failure in making the journey. Even if you come up short of the goal, you still have everything that you learned along the way under your belt, you still have the humility of understanding how challenging your goal was. None of that should be taken for granted.

As long as you don’t sacrifice your personal health, safety, and all the relationships around you, what risk is it for you? A little loss of your pride? Let it go and get on the saddle and make progress toward your journey.

Conclusion

I argue that our journey toward our goals is more important than the goal itself. Next time you are afraid to set a goal towards something, don’t fear the failure of it. Think about the joys of the personal growth that you will experience with it.

If you have been someone who was out of shape and trained hard for a marathon over 6–8 months, you certainly would not come out of that endeavor the same person.

Forget about succeeding or failing at the goal and take steps toward your journey. Your future self will never regret doing something but you will regret not doing something.