Enjoying the Process
I went blueberry picking a few weeks ago with my partner, Michael. We went on a Tuesday morning and pretty much had the entire field to ourselves. We took our boxes and split off to fill them up.
After a little while we caught up with each other and his box was completely full while mine was maybe only about halfway full. I continued to pick berries, carefully plucking each single berry into my hand then transferring them to the box. Michael asked “Why are you picking them one by one?” then proceeded to show me his faster method of grabbing a whole berry cluster with both hands and doing a dragging/shaking motion that made all of the berries fall in to his hands at once. A little baffled why I would choose to go so slow by picking them one by one, I told him “I’m enjoying the process.” To which he replied “Fair enough.”
Even the guy who has been practicing Zen Buddhism for 20 years needs a little reminder from time to time of the enjoyment of the little things.🙃 🥰
As business owners we set goals. This is a good thing. We all need checkpoints to strive toward or look forward to. But when we set goals we have to be mindful that we are not only working for an end result, but also enjoying the journey along the way. Love the game, not just the win. If you’re waiting to reach a goal just so that you can stop playing the game, then why are you playing at all? If I just wanted blueberries quickly I would have just gone to the store.
When we set goals sometimes we can lose sight of this piece of enjoying the journey. All the while you’re miserable, your family is unhappy, your passions and hobbies have taken a back seat, and your personal relationships are falling apart. Goal setting does not have to include making a choice between being happy and being miserable. Understanding the deeper motive of the goal that you have set for yourself will help to prevent you from setting yourself up for an Arrival Fallacy and keep perspective along the way so that you can actually enjoy the journey. If you’re setting goals with the expectation that achieving them will bring you happiness then you are setting yourself up for trouble. There is no happiness that we will find in our future that we don’t already have. Results are never guaranteed, but you can at least know you enjoyed trying to get there and you experienced growth along the way.
As for the blueberries, I had all of these goals to bake and make a giant batch of BBQ sauce from them, but we ended up eating them all before I could get to that. But I got to experience the warm sun on my shoulders and enjoy the peaceful silence of the big field that we had all to ourselves. And grabbing a handful every time I opened the fridge to enjoy the sweetness of Summer was a small joy every day. 🫐