Reach Your Dreams: You CAN Get There From Here
One luxury of flying a plane is traveling straight to your destination. Barring an obstacle along the route like restricted airspace or an ominous weather system, you can take the shortest distance between two points—a straight line—to get there fast.
Life on the ground is more problematic, for car travel and the journey toward a dream. Rarely is the route a straight, easy line between two points. But most experienced drivers don’t question their abilities to get from New York City to Los Angeles by car even if they’ve never made the trip before. They’d look at a map, plan the route, then start an adventure.
Yet, why do some people lack faith when going for a dream? Granted, there isn’t a roadmap showing how to get there, but most have a general sense of a path to take to achieve the dream. But that can be a multifold problem. First, we may become so fixated on the envisioned path that we don’t recognize alternative routes, especially when an obstacle blocks us. But worse, we may slow down or stop (or even not start at all) because we can’t anticipate every turn and fork-in-the-road choice in our heads, even if the choice won’t be made until much later in the journey.
If I plopped a U.S. map in front of you with five wildly varied routes highlighted from New York City to Los Angeles, and I only asked, “Which route will get you to your destination?” what would your answer be? All of them, of course. The travel time may vary significantly, and each holds a different adventure with its own, distinctive scenery, but each route will ultimately get you to your destination. Well… they will if you don’t pull over to the side of the road and sit forever.
Yet that’s what too many do in the pursuit of their big dreams and goals. They pull over, wheels on the curb of life, sitting on the hood of their ambition because they don’t know every turn and twist ahead of time. The gaps in their mental roadmaps incapacitate them.
Go back to our road trip example from N.Y.C. to L.A. Suppose we choose the scenic route, avoiding the interstates. Even if we consult a map before starting, can we remember every detail of the vast journey in our head as we drive? No, but we keep moving anyway. Do we pull off the highway and stop every time we’re unsure if we turn left or right 20 miles down the road? No, we keep moving. If the map flies out the window or the GPS malfunctions, do we pull over and wait for the AAA calvary to bring replacements? No, we keep moving, confident that signs along the way will show us where to turn until we can get stop and get that GPS working.
If that is the case on a road trip, then why do so many try to analyze every turn or mentally debate each potential fork-in-the-road choice before moving in earnest toward their dreams? Maybe it’s because they want to reach their destination as quickly as possible, so they try to plan the most direct route. The irony is, this causes some to do nothing because the unknowns overwhelm. In the pursuit of our dreams, we must recognize this truth: there are multiple routes and it’s more important to start moving and keep momentum than to know the exact path we’ll use to get there.
There’s an old joke with the punch-line, “You can’t get there from here.” It’s usually a quip for a route that is difficult. But the reality is, you CAN get there from here if you keep moving. For those who’d like a semblance of a road map, feel free to jot the following down and stick in your pocket as reminders:
1) Hold the end destination in mind.
2) Start the journey and keep moving toward it.
3) Do something every day that moves you closer, no matter how small.
4) Trust that signs will appear when you need them.
5) Realize there are infinite routes to your destination.
6) Worry about the details when you get to them, not before.
