Are We There Yet?
We’ve all heard this before; whether you are a parent reading this having flashbacks of your own children asking this question in the car on a family road-trip away, or the sound of your own voice when you were younger asking that age-old question… are we there yet?
Apparently we never grew out of that.
The purpose of this article is not to say that we should not look forward to what is coming, but rather build awareness that if we are too focused on the end product, we risk losing focus on enjoying how we get there.
Let me go back to the family road trip example. There are plenty of pleasures with car rides: music, talking with family or friends, scenery or even silence. The same goes for the process of starting a new job or healing yourself from a past trauma, whether it is physical or mental. No matter what the journey is, the process of appreciating how you are getting there forces but one thing:
slow down.
If we spend our lives constantly anticipating the next thing, it hinders our ability to stay present and enjoy what really ends up being one of the most important parts: that is; the journey and how to overcome the obstacles that you face in attempt to get to your destination.
Many of us live our day to day lives like this: We anticipate and look forward to the weekend – which is only 2 days out of 7 in a week. We spend 5 days looking forward to those 2 days which amounts to roughly 104 days out of the 365 days in a year.
Are we really ok with spending the majority of our week looking forward to the week’s end?
The concept of destination addiction (aka what is next) seems to be a growing problem I see in myself and peers around me. I freely admit I am someone who loves to live a busy life and copes well under pressure (despite my complaints). However, in doing this I often forget to stop and appreciate the journey as I am looking for the next goal before even hitting the original one.
I learned this lesson the hard way last year when a mix of working 3 jobs, studying full time at university and trying to keep up a buzzing social life left me run down, in hospital and bed ridden for two and a half weeks. I distinctly remember my mother saying something along the lines of “I know you’re sad because you’re unwell, but it’s nice to have you around home”.
That time in my life also made me appreciate the feeling of doing nothing and forced me to reflect on what I had been doing, how I had been living and whether or not I was appreciating those things in my life. Ultimately, the answer to that was no.
I would love to say I learned my lesson in full, but I still love the thrills of pressures from work and the constant “go”. In saying that, I am more aware of the processes now and I am lucky enough to have a professional mentor in my life who has helped me sketch out a goal to reach within the next year and a half which forces me to slow it down, do it right, do it well and do it with purpose.
The act of mindfulness and doing everything with purpose is not easy.
I have not mastered it, nor am I close to – however being aware of it is a great start.
If you believe destination addiction is something that affects your life, unfortunately I do not have an answer on how to free yourself from it. All I can offer is my experiences and opinions.
So here it is –
Try to be more mindful of what you do. Start small, and do it constantly. Eventually you will create a habit, so that the act of mindfulness comes naturally.
An example to help you begin would be for when you open your eyes in the morning and stretch out, think about why you are stretching and how it makes you feel. You do it because your body has been at rest, and now you need to help wake up your body and your muscles by stretching them, moving them and warming them up for the day ahead. Or when you make that morning coffee, appreciate the smell, the warmth of the cup and the taste. When you eat a meal, try to eat a little slower and acknowledge that the food you are consuming is to nourish and energise your body throughout the day.
It is these small habits that will allow you to slowly appreciate these things in your life, which you can eventually manifest into all that you say and do in an attempt to create a life where you do not just look forward to the week’s end, rather become someone who looks forward to life.
That is, someone who is appreciative, attentive and mindful – someone who does not ask “are we there yet?”, but rather says “thank you for leading me here”.
