Recently a good friend said to me “It’s the journey that’s important.” As a young woman attending a liberal arts university in Seattle I was immersed in this concept. Each moment was “the point,” whether I was attending a lecture or drinking wine and solving the world’s problems with my peers. As an English major I read the Odyssey and though I was not fond of almost any of the characters (I found almost all of them to be cranky or whiny), I came away with a profound conviction to live my life, not with my eyes fixed on some future prize but with my attention on the now, on the journey. As I get older I find that it is easy to lose that immediacy. As adults, with bills to pay and retirement to plan for and perhaps children to worry about, it is so easy to allow ourselves to stress about the future and have little time for today.
You may be wondering why I’m blathering at you like you’re one of my old friends drinking three dollar Merlot and posturing toward world peace. “What does this have to do with building a strong business?” But think about it a second. As business men and women, if we are constantly looking at the bottom line instead of focusing on the current project or fretting over what’s coming next our business will never flourish as much as it can. The journey is what is important. Each project deserves full attention. Each moment is an opportunity to put your best foot forward with a client. Each interaction or communication is the chance to build relationship and solidify a strong foundation within your network. So to pay it forward, hopefully this blog post will bring you back into the moment and set you back on your journey a little more awake to the now than you were before, like my friend did for me. Allow your attention to be drawn to what is in front of you with a glance here and there to what’s ahead instead of the reverse and you will find that your work comes out higher quality, your collaborations go more smoothly, your clients feel more taken care of, and you feel more fulfilled.
