These are some of my favorite fortune cookie quotes:
Keep your broken arm inside your sleeve.
You can always find happiness at work on Friday.
The greatest danger could be your stupidity.
My wife brought me some Panda Express today for lunch, and included of course was the little cookie that provides a nugget of wisdom for us to guide our lives by. Today’s little nugget was, “You will obtain your goal if you maintain your course.” Typically I only pay attention to these morsels of truth if they have some sort of lost in translation to English glitch, but this one reminded me of a great lesson that we all need to remember, or it will be a rough “course.” The lesson is really twofold; let me start with the second part, which needs to be in place to even have a course.
2nd Lesson is this: You must have a goal to have a course! Without a goal you will just wander around aimlessly with no course to maintain, no direction to head, no destination to anticipate. Have you ever taken a mystery trip? You know, you have a week off and you have no idea where you are going or what you are going to do. So you just pack a few essentials get in the car and start heading some direction. As much as this would seem so cool I don’t think I could pull this off, it would just drive me crazy not having a plan. I know when I go to a new place the first thing I like to do is scope it out and make sure I know what all my options might be. I don’t want to eat at a typical restaurant if I could experience something that I have never had before or could not have where I live. Many times in life whether it is personal, family, or business related we forget to set a goal or destination. If we don’t have a goal we can’t have a course. The cool thing about having a goal is that there can be various routes to get there, and that is when the excitement of the journey becomes available to us.
1st Lesson is this: Maintaining the course is where life happens. So often we live life only focused on the end results that we forget about the process of getting there. This is what I call experiencing the journey. In the early 90’s Tom Cochrane wrote a song called, “Life is a Highway” and it has been covered a couple of times since then. Most recently Rascal Flatts covered this song for the Disney/Pixar flick “Cars” (song video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvsmRuRp4cM). The chorus goes like this, “Life is a highway, I wanna ride it all night long / If you’re going my way, I wanna drive it / All night long.” Life is the journey. Reaching a goal is only part of the experience, but getting there typically is the most valuable part of reaching the goal. Most of the time when we travel as a family in the car I do the majority of the driving. Despite my wife’s suggestion that I might take in too much scenery while driving, it amazes me how much more along the road I notice when I am not driving. It is like I have never been there before when I look around while being in the passenger seat. There is so much of the journey that I miss when I am focused on just getting there. Life is a highway and we need to take in the experience or when we “arrive” we just won’t appreciate the final destination in the same way. Have you ever observed the difference between those who have worked hard and made a lot of money compared to those who have been rather fortunate and either inherited a lot of money or came by it rather easily? One has experienced the journey and one has not. Often one has a greater value for the wealth and one does not. The process is important; it gives credibility to the destination.
What journey are you on today that you have shortchanged by only worrying about the end result? Step back and enjoy the journey. Life is a Highway… Enjoy the ride!
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