Monday Morning Motivation: It's The Journey, Not The Destination!

Monday Morning Motivation:
It’s The Journey, Not The Destination!

Really? REALLY? Is it really the first Monday of December? Oh man, where did the entire year go? Well, no sense lamenting the torn pages of the calendar, especially when there’s so much work to do. Team GEM is headed for a strong finish this year and we hope you are too.

I’m going to make this short and sweet this morning. Today’s Monday Morning Motivation is borne of a conversation I had with a girlfriend this weekend on a getaway trip with our daughters (I’ll tell you more about that in a bit). Anyway, this friend of mine and her husband are building a house in Ireland where their families are from and they hope to retire someday. Sounds great doesn’t it? And it is.. or rather will be, when they get it finished.

But that is a project that is years in the making. When she and her husband got married almost 20 years ago, they laid out a vision for their lives. They wanted kids, they wanted a home, they wanted to visit and someday retire in Ireland. Then they got busy.

Step-by-step, they cobbled together their dream, which did not involve borrowing copious amounts of money, going heavily into debt, finishing the house in a month, then being strangled by payments. No, they are literally building it a piece at a time. One trip they bought the land and had it leveled, another trip, they laid the foundation and still another, they put up the frame. This last trip, the wood floors went in and they know what needs to be done the next time they go.

It’s a slow and tedious process and they are doing much of the work themselves. But when it’s done in three years, five years, ten years or however long it takes, they’ll have an appreciation for the house and the time it took to get it done. They are not only building a house (the smart way and paying as they go), but they are building a lifetime of memories for themselves and their children.

Would they like to have it all done at once? Perhaps. But then their kids wouldn’t see the building a dream. Someday, they’ll all sit there around the fire and marvel at the handcrafted trim and the sturdy wood floors. Imagine the satisfaction that will come when they’re drinking tea with kids (and maybe grandkids) around the fire and thinking, “We did this”.

They are cobbling together a dream, one brick at a time and it’s a lesson for us all. We needn’t be rushing, breakneck speed, from the start of our lives to the end; there are moments, even difficult ones, in which to learn , grow and ultimately enjoy.

So what about you, are you? Are you racing to the end (whatever that is) without taking a breath to see what can me learned in the hear and now? Or are you taking the slower approach? If so, what have you learned? If not, why not? Lemme hear ya!