Enjoying the journey: live life slowly 👣
Hi friends, welcome back! In today's post I want to talk about the process of enjoying the journey.
I had a tendency to go through life and only let myself be happy once I achieved my goal or got to a certain point. This ranged anywhere from:
allowing myself to relax only once a semester was done
feeling accomplished only after I passed my 3 day professional accounting exam
loving my body only after it looked how I wanted it to
These are very goal-oriented examples but not enjoying the journey can also look like:
stressing about being single and placing all your happiness on the event of you finding a partner (I personally never felt like this, but it's a common sentiment amongst a few of my friends)
trudging through the work week miserably and waiting for the weekend, and repeating this every single week
All the examples above follow a common structure of placing our sense of happiness/enjoyment/fulfillment/satisfaction on a future event. While this might keep us motivated or looking forward to something, I often found that it didn't allow me to be present and find joy in what I was doing.
For example, instead of enjoying my workouts, I would just be thinking about how many more times I would have to do this until I had my "dream body". Or when the weekend finally hit, I would just stress about how time was going by and that soon, it would be Monday again.
I was living in a such a future-oriented headspace and I found myself banning happiness until my goals were reached. This is so toxic for a number of reasons, but the biggest one being the sense of disappointment I felt when I didn't reach my goal. My automatic thought was "wow, that was such a waste of time" which is 100% not the right way of looking at it.
After a lot of self-reflection and internal work, my outlook has shifted.
I find moments of joy everyday and make time for myself everyday, whether its just 5 minutes or a few hours. By incorporating small acts of fun into my workweek, I don't just feel like I'm waiting for the weekend to come so that I can enjoy myself.
An example of this is my morning matcha - the highlight of my morning. I love the process, and adding an electric milk frother into my routine recently has changed the game.
With working out, I no longer am waiting for that dream body because I know that with every rep, every workout, I am getting stronger and that eventually, the results will show themselves. I'm not working out anymore because of how I want my body to look "one day" but because I love the way I feel during, and after my workout.
By introducing these small things into my daily routine, I truly feel like I'm able to live in the present and therefore, enjoy the journey. Before, I felt like I was depriving myself of this joy and that felt horrible. We have one life to live, why would we want to intentionally make ourselves feel like this?
That being said, I know it's so tough sometimes to "enjoy the journey". When you're knee-deep in work or stressed out of your mind, what's there to enjoy? I totally get that and I've been there way too many times but I always try to remember the bigger picture and this helps immensely. (i.e. I'm learning technical knowledge that I can use later or I'm developing soft skills that will help me in future situations or I'm so grateful to have a job that challenges me)
Try living life fully aware and in the present, do small joy-invoking acts everyday and I guarantee you, life will become that much more vibrant. I no longer have this pressure on myself to achieve these goals in order to be happy because I know what I'm doing everyday is life-long, which makes me enjoy it that much more.
Sending you lots of love and light,
-Reina xo