Flourishing is a journey not a destination (Axioms for Flourishing #5)

The day after I ran the very first Walt Disney World Marathon, I woke up with a vague sense of feeling a bit down and listless.

Sure, I was tired and more than a little sore.

I expected that part.

But I did not expect to feel more than a little depressed.

After a while, I figured out that I felt down because I no longer had a big goal in my life.

For eight months, my life revolved around marathon training.

When I got up, when I went to bed, what I ate, how late I stayed out.

I was young.

My entire life was built around the marathon.

I got faster, stronger, lighter, and my confidence grew.

I was on the road to accomplishing something really hard, something that few people ever attempt.

Then the big day came and went, and I was left with nothing to anchor my life.

It turns out there's even a name for this post, Marathon Blues, which would be an awesome band name.

Runners talk about this all the time.

The anticlimactic goal hangover when the big event is over and you're left with what, exactly?

My big mistake was in not thinking about the marathon as just one step.

Okay, a lot of steps along a bigger journey towards peak fitness and turning around what had been a bit of an undisciplined life.

I focused on the destination, not the journey.

Steve Jobs said the journey is the reward.

He made that saying famous.

But the journey is the reward.

Is ancient wisdom, the kind that keeps getting rediscovered because it's so true?

Understanding that flourishing is an ongoing journey, one that will last your entire lifetime, is essential for living an excellent life.

You don't wake up one day and say, hooray, I flourished.

And that's the end of it.

Flourishing is built not only day by day, but moment by moment.

It's built through a lifetime of making choices that align with who you want to be.

As is the case with many journeys, it is not a linear path.

The journey is twisty, messy, and often fraught with unintentional missteps.

But remember, it is a journey.

Even if you get off the path one day, you can come back to the path the next.

There's something, I don't know, daunting about this, isn't there?

If flourishing is never finished, if there's no moment where you've made it, doesn't that feel kind of exhausting?

But there is a flip side, and it's liberating.

You do not have to be perfect.

Not today, not ever.

When you get off the right path, you step back on it.

Growth is measured in progress, not perfection.

When I started digging into the ancient wisdom around the idea of flourishing as a journey, I discovered something interesting.

Various philosophical and religious traditions come at the idea of flourishing as a journey from different angles.

Aristotle defines excellence, or eudaimonia, as an activity of the soul.

It's not a goal, it's not a destination, it's not an end state.

It's a way of being in the world.

Aristotle's famous path to eudaimonia involves an ongoing process of instruction, practice, habit and being.

First you have to understand what an excellent life is.

Then you have to practice excellence until it becomes a habit.

Finally, over long practice, you are excellent.

This process never ends.

You can always learn more, practice more, and go further along the journey of excellence.

One of the best known Stoics, Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, wrote daily reminders to himself to stay on the path to excellence.

He understood that excellence is a journey that involves continual, ongoing practice.

The Stoics also emphasize acceptance of that journey.

One famous Stoic practice is Amor fati, literally translated as love of fate.

Fate is what it is, you can't change it.

The Stoics understood that you can't control circumstances, only your response.

Nietzsche put it a bit differently.

His formula for human greatness is that that one wants nothing to be different.

Not forward, not backward, not in all eternity, not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it, but love it.

Storms come and go, as does sunshine throughout both.

An excellent life requires accepting them and moving forward on your journey.

Buddhists also practice accepting what is, but through non attachment.

Living well requires not becoming attached to some destination, but rather accepting the journey as it is, without while staying true to the journey.

There's a classic Buddhist saying, in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the experts there are few.

The beginner's mind keeps you open, not assuming you've arrived, not closed off by expertise.

Even masters practice.

There's no graduation, only the path.

In the Taoist tradition, the journey is the reward.

In part because the journey and the traveler are one and the same.

They are inseparable.

The traveler shapes the journey and the journey shapes the traveler.

So the reward isn't some destination.

Rather it's the intertwining of the journey and the traveler and a one of a kind experience of living life the way it ought to be lived.

Modern psychology supports what ancient philosophers knew, flourishing is a journey.

For example, psychologist Tal Ben Shahar discusses the arrival fallacy, which is the mistaken belief that achieving some goal, like a marathon, will make us permanently happy.

But repeated studies show that we adapt to achievements quickly and the happiness fades.

As I found out with the Marathon Blues, the satisfaction is not in the summit, it's in the climb.

Research on well being tells us that to flourish, we need ongoing experiences of autonomy, competence and growth.

These aren't states you achieve once.

They're needs that we satisfy through continuous practice through the journey.

Here's another example.

You may have heard of the concept of flow.

A state in which you are completely absorbed in an activity to the point that you lose track of time and self consciousness.

You're doing something for its own sake, not for some external reward.

Research on flow states tells us that our most fulfilling moments happen during challenging activities, not after we've completed them.

Flow states require full engagement with the process, which is impossible if you're fixated on some finish line.

In other words, the doing is the thing, not the reward.

There are also some more subtle psychological effects when you focus on the journey and not the destination.

For example, you're able to not get overwhelmed with large goals, but rather to enjoy the small wins along the way.

Suppose, for example, that you want to get healthier rather than focusing only on some artificial weight goal.

If you focus on the journey, you take pleasure in making better decisions each and every day.

Then when you hit that goal, it's just another step along your ongoing journey to health.

Research consistently shows that intrinsic motivation, internal motivation, doing something because it's personally meaningful or enjoyable is more powerful and sustainable than extrinsic motivation, which relies on external rewards like bonuses or recognition.

When you're intrinsically motivated, the activity itself becomes rewarding.

You practice piano because you love making music, not to win a recital.

Do you even win recitals?

You run because it makes you feel alive, not just across a finish line.

The journey becomes inherently satisfying, not merely a means to an end.

Hopefully what I've said today has led you to think a little differently about flourishing.

Flourishing is not a state, it's a practice.

A practice that involves imperfection, stumbles, corrections.

But those imperfections are critical to the journey.

We grow by making mistakes and by being better the next time.

Throughout your journey, remember to be kind to yourself and to realize that you are human.

What makes you an excellent human being is not being perfect.

It's consistently returning to the path of excellence and virtue.

Will Durant, paraphrasing Aristotle, wrote, we are what we repeatedly do.

Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.

And the habit is built through practice, daily, imperfect and ongoing.

The excellence is in the practicing, not in having practiced.

Treat flourishing as a journey and you're already there.

Thank you, my friends.