“Life is a journey, not a destination,” is a quote attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Although there is some dispute as to whether he ever said that, he did write: “To finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.”
That is a thought that most of us lose sight of. We are taught to ignore the journey, to focus solely on the destination and view our life’s voyage as being mundane and commonplace; we’re to pay no heed to our daily successes and keep our eye only on what we define as our ultimate – Success!
The ironic part is that success in capital letters doesn’t exist, because for us that type of success is a moving target. If and when we do reach what we’ve been yearning for, we immediately set our sights on something else. That definitive success that we defined as the final destination is an illusion, a mirage.
We so often focus solely on the big picture, that we lose track on the journey there. And the journey is life and it is filled, with (what we normally define as) trivial, small successes. These are ones we seldom acknowledge or celebrate since we generally only view them as means that will get us to that final golden, shiny neon-lit – Success.
What a waste of a once-in-a-lifetime ride. We get so hypnotized and numbed by our slavish worship of Success with a capital “S” that we miss all of the real successes that life showers us during our journey.
That’s why “On The Road” hit such a chord when it came out and still resonates. For Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty the focus was not on where they would end up but on their journey there, wherever “there” happened to be.
We generally think of those in the corporate world or the Wall Street wolves as the ones who get stuck in the life-sucking success-focused merry-go-round, but artists are just as susceptible to this life deadening approach.
So, snap out of it!
Acknowledge your “small” successes and then delete the word “small.” Don’t simply acknowledge your successes as they come,
Celebrate them.
Reward yourself.
Indulge yourself.
And do the same with those that work alongside of you.
My focus here isn’t on goal-setting, and success celebrations as a personal development tool or as a way to help you achieving your larger goals and reaching Success more efficiently, but on focusing on what’s real.
We try to stay aware of this with our PR campaigns. Yes, we’ve had clients in Time and on CNN, but we’ve also placed them in local newspapers and blogs. Each of those is a success. Just as clients have had exhibits at established New York galleries and one-day pop-up shows in out-of-the-way vacant buildings. All of those are successes to celebrate.
Recognize life successes as they happen to you as opposed to solely being focused on what you haven’t accomplished. You’ll be amazed what that can do to your outlook on life. Plus if you acknowledge and celebrate those different types of successes, the offbeat or the unexpected, who knows where it might lead you.
To once again quote Emerson:
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
Copyright © PR FOR ARTISTS / Anthony Mora / Aubrie Wienholt 2016