321 Holly Worton ~ How to Balance Your Focus Between the Journey and the Destination

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I’m back again, with another solo episode! This week’s topic is inspired by my recent walk along the 100-mile South Downs Way. This journey was very, very different from the first time I walked the trail: the first time, I focused on the destination more than the journey; this time, I focused the journey more than the destination. I know people always say that it’s important to focus on the journey, and not the destination, but I don’t agree with that. It’s a delicate balance, because you kind of have to focus on both. In this episode, I discuss how to apply this concept to life.

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What You’ll Learn

Why you need to focus on both the journey AND the destination
How to balance your focus between the journey and the destination
Whether or not we always have to know where we’re going
How to find joy in the journey
Why it’s important to evaluate the different paths to reach our goals
How reviewing our progress along the way can increase the joy in our journey

Things I Discussed

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Transcript

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Today I am talking about a topic that’s very fresh in my mind because I have just returned from walking the South Downs Way, which is a 100-mile trail in South East England, and it is a trail that I walked for the first time four years ago and I wrote a book about it because I wanted to share the experience. And then I always felt kind of bad about the book because — you know I get emails all the time from people thanking me for it, and saying it was really useful — but I had a really rough time and I wanted to show that it doesn’t have to be hard. So that’s why I walked the trail again and I am going to be updating the book with my second journey in it. This journey was very, very different from the first time I walked the trail. The first time it was all about, I was very focussed on the destination more than the journey, it was difficult, I was in a lot of pain, and I just wanted to get to my destination each day. And this time, there wasn’t a lot of pain for various reasons and I was able to focus more on the journey than the destination, which is kind of the whole point of doing a walk like this. It is a delicate balance because you kind of have to focus on both, you obviously have to know where you are going so that you can get there, but then you need to enjoy the journey.

And that is a lot like life when you think about it, so in this episode I am going to be discussing how to apply this concept to life. This concept of balancing our focus between the journey and the destination. I am going to talk about how to balance that. Whether or not we always have to know where we are going and how to find joy in the journey, as we get to our destination. So, four years ago, I was so excited to walk the South Downs Way, I had read a couple of books about it and I had been doing lots of walking and lots of day walks and I really wanted to have that experience of walking a longer trail. I have wanted to walk the Camino de Santiago for so long, since 1996, it has been on my list of things to do and I haven’t done it yet. And I keep putting it in the calendar and then realising that I am not sure how to actually block out five or six weeks in my calendar to do something like that, so it keeps getting deleted. And then I finally decided to put it for 2021 and then realised that’s a Holy year, so there are going to be tons of people on the trail, and so it is postponed again. So that is a whole different topic of conversation, it will happen, I am not sure when. But, that was my reason for walking the South Downs Way, it is 100 miles, rather than 500 miles, I thought it would be a good trial for me to see what it is like walking a long-distance-trail. I love walking, as you know, love being outdoors, and it just seemed like a logical thing to do. However, walking one day on the weekend, or two days on the weekend, is not the same as walking eight or nine days in a row, or more. The activity builds up on your body, your feet hurt, your legs hurt, and your body doesn’t recover as much as you think it would.

So it was really, really difficult for me, add to that the fact that I booked the walk during the hottest week of the year, it was the last walk of June, first week of July, because I thought it would make sense to book it during the summer when I was more likely to have good weather, dry weather, and I had very dry weather and very hot weather and it was too hot to be walking really. There was one day where we had record heat, it had never been that hot in the history of England in that week of the year and it was just really, really, difficult because the hotter it is the more water you need, and so water is heavy, so I was carrying a lot of weight on my back which mean that my feet hurt. Anyway, I won’t get into the details because they are all in the book, but for various reasons it was a very difficult journey. And while I loved it, I enjoyed it, I was simultaneously in a lot of pain, like physical pain. And so I would stop, and I would take breaks and I would just be reading my guidebook to see how much longer do I have until I get to my destination; how much longer do I have to walk today? What is it going to be like? How many ups and downs are there? In a sense I was focussed on the journey because I was looking at how far I had to go, and what was it going to be like but the actual experience of that walking, of taking each step was not something that I focused on because I just wanted to get where I was going every night. And I split up the 100 miles into eight days — my feet were hurting from day one — so it was eight days of pain, and kind of enjoying it but also kind of wanting the day could be over so I could get my backpack off my back and my feet stop walking.

This time, I divided it into nine days, I gave myself an extra day, because I had one really long day the first time around and that made it easier and for that and a variety of other reasons it was much, much, easier. I have learned a lot from walking the South Downs Way the first time; I have learned a lot from walking the Ridgeway; I have learned a lot from the other trails that I have walked Int this area including the Downs Link and the Way South Path. Every time I go on one of these walking journeys I learn something that I can later put into practice on my next walk. So this walk was kind of the culmination of all these learning experiences and applying all the stuff that I had learned and that is what made it a much easier time. So this time I was much more easily able to focus on the journey rather than the destination. And reflecting on this, I realise that there is a balance because you hear people talking about focussing on the journey and not the destination and I disagree with that, I do think you have to be focussed on both but you need to balance your focus between the two, because if you don’t know where you are going, then how are you going to get there? And that applies to walking a long-distance trail as it does apply to life.

So, I had this 100-mile trail, I started off in Winchester, ended in Eastbourne, I knew where I had to go each night of the trail, of the journey, because I was staying in a B&B or an Inn that I booked, because you have to book this advance because often it is hard to get places to stay because these are really small villages, and in some places there are only one or two places to stay along the way. So I knew where I had to go each night, I knew where I had to get off the trail to get to each place, so I knew my destination, I knew my big destination which was Eastbourne at the end of the week, and I knew which was my destination each night. And that was really necessary, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to get to the places I was staying, obviously I knew where I was staying each night, I knew how to get there. I think that knowing the destination is important, because if you don’t have a specific destination you are just going to wander around in circles or just wander around, take in the trail, getting somewhere but is that where you wanted to be? If I just started off in Winchester and walked any old way, who knows where I may have ended up? Maybe it would have been amazing, maybe it would have been not so great. But on a trail, as in life, you have got to know where you are going, because otherwise what is your life going to be like if you are just wandering around with no destination? I really believe that you have got to know what it is that you want to experience in this life, because we do have limited number of years on earth. in this lifetime, if you believe in multiple lifetimes, that is a whole other thing. I do, but I still believe on focussing on this one. If you don’t know where you are going how are you going to get there? If you don’t know what you want to experience how are you going to experience it? I think that’s why a lot of people are really unhappy in life because they don’t spend the time thinking about where they want to be headed and what they want to experience, and I have done podcast episodes on this topic very recently looking at self-knowledge and the three questions and where are you going in life? I will link to those in the show notes, but I really think that knowing your destination is important.

I also believe that being flexible with your destination is important, I do believe that we need to reevaluate our goals and our plans and our vision on a regular basis, because if we are really into personal development that means that we are constantly growing and that means that the goals that we set in January are not necessarily still going to be valid or important to us come September. A lot of them will be but some of them may not be and I think that is why we need to be open and curious when we look at our goals and when we are reevaluating our goals, because sometimes they will need to change, sometimes we need to pivot our focus, sometimes we need to shift our path and change our destination, but I do think we need to have a destination otherwise we are not going to get anything done. I think a lot of times a lot of people that are really unhappy in life, like I said, are people who don’t know what they want. And I speak for myself, I have been very goal driven for the last 20 years of my life but before that, I didn’t really know what I wanted. And I think especially in the last 10 years of my life I have been really really focussed on setting goals, achieving them, adjusting them, working on my mindset, so that I can achieve them, and I have been very destination-focussed rather than journey-focussed. I think that is kind of my natural default and perhaps that’s a natural default for a lot of people who are goal-driven. I did a podcast on this recently, which was talking about balancing being goal-driven and having flexibility, so I will link to that also in the show notes and that is going off on a tangent and I have already talked about that.

So how do you balance your focus between the journey and the destination, whether you are walking a long-distance trail, or whether you are talking about general life stuff. I think it is really important to first of all, like I said, set meaningful goals, plan meaningful destinations, things that are important to you, things that you want to experience in your life. I think it is important to set goals that have meaning, and I think it is also important to pay attention along the way. Pay attention to: are we enjoying the journey to get there, because whenever we set a goal there are multiple journeys, or multiple paths to take to achieve that goal. We are not going to like all of those paths; we are not going to like all of those journeys, so we need to be mindful about choosing the right path to get to our destination. If you are looking at setting up a business you can look at hiring a coach and getting support and working with a mentor, learning from people who have been on a similar path. Or you could do it on your own and forge your own way and struggle and not invest in yourself and that might be the more difficult way, that might not be the more pleasant way. It can be very helpful to get support, that’s just one example. And I am going back to business, because I think a lot of people who listen to this are self-employed, but using another business example, you can hustle, you can work 18-hour-days, you can stress yourself or you could live a more balanced life, but I do understand when you are setting up a new business you have got to work at it, you have got to be focussed, you have got to be driven. And I think balance is important, I have lots of business friends who have not had balanced lives in the past and they have made their lives all about their business and that has been really, really, stressful and they have had to learn from that experience. And the same goes for a career, if you are not self-employed but you do have a job, there are some jobs that are more stressful than others, there are some jobs that require you to be ‘on’ all the time, connected all the time and that can be more stressful than other jobs.

So it is all about finding that balance and finding that path that is joyful. In the same way that my path from Winchester to Eastbourne was really beautiful, because I was walking through the South Downs, I could have done a different path that took me down roads, walkIng along the side of roads, and that would have been really stressful rather than walking on footpaths. So that’s a weird example but you get what I mean, you can pick the beautiful path, you can pick the joyful path, you can pick the path that involves doing things that you like and get to your destination. Or you can pick the path that is really stressful and just burns you out and that can still get you to the destination. So look at all the different paths that you have that will take you to your destination. It is like sitting down and making a list of all of the different options you have for achieving your goals, I think that is really worth doing. To make sure that you are on the path that you want and make sure that you realise that there is more than one path to get to that goal. I think a lot of times we go with the first path that we see, and we don’t stop and evaluate the fact that there are alternate paths to get to that destination and I think mindfulness is really important, being mindful of what journey is like. Again, to bring an example from the trail: are my feet tired? Okay then I should stop and rest and take my shoes and socks off and let my feet cool and rest and that will help me to avoid getting blisters. Am I hungry? Do I need to stop and have a snack? Am I thirsty? Do I need to hydrate so that I don’t have a problem with dehydration? Be mindful of what you are experiencing. Are my water bottles getting down level? That means I need to fill up at the next water tap. You know just being aware of what your needs are and how you feel and what you are experiencing on each step of your journey can make the journey much easier because you will be aware of what adjustments you need to make; of what things you need to do to make the journey more joyful. And that mindfulness can also help us focus on the experiences that we are having along our journey because obviously things happen to us, we see things, we experience things, we learn things, we acquire skills. Who are we becoming as we walk alone this journey? This is all stuff that you will notice if you stop and think about it. If you are just blindly hustling your way down the path, not only will you not see this path that you are walking on but you won’t be realising, you won’t be understanding this person that you are becoming, this person that you are growing into, this new identity, perhaps, that you are taking on, as you are walking this path, but you will if you stop and look and feel

So that’s why I think it is important to stop and review our progress, our progress in life, our progress towards our destination. Look at how far we have come on our journey. Review our progress early and often, look at our small wins, look at the little milestones that we have achieved and celebrate those milestones, celebrate those wins, celebrate that progress. That will help us be mindful of what our journey has been like, of how much we have achieved, of how much we have yet to go and how do we want to adjust our journey so that it becomes more joyful, so that we can achieve that destination, so that we can achieve those goals. And also to evaluate: do we still want to achieve those goals, do we want to change them, do we want to adjust them, do we want to just cancel them? Sometimes those things are no longer important to us, or maybe we want to put them on the back burner. Maybe they are important but not as important as other things, so we want to shift the priority. Stopping to look at our progress, review our progress, can really, really, help, make our journey more joyful.

So what does this mean in practical terms? We have got goals and we have got a plan to achieve our goals, we are working on a plan to achieve our goals, how do we make the journey more joyful? I think it comes back to regular check-ins and this could be maybe something that you do on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, on a quarterly basis, annual basis, or all of the above. I think the more regularly you stop and do these check-ins, the more joyful your journey will be. So, let’s look at this: what would a review look like? It would look like having a list of your goals, either in your journal, your planner, your project management system, maybe have a spreadsheet? I think for me it would be working on this in my journal. So having a list of goals and looking at how far I have come first of all, so from day zero to today, how far have I come? What have I achieved so far? What milestones have I achieved? What have I learned along the way? How have I grown along the way? Who have I become along the way? What skills have I acquired along the way? What am I grateful for from this journey? What have I enjoyed about this journey? What has the journey given me so far in terms of experience? And celebrate that, acknowledge that. I think we often we look at how far we have to go without looking at how far we have come.

So once you have answered those questions and journaled on that or however you want to do it, look at the path forward. Do you want to keep walking on this same track towards your destination, or do you want to change it up? Do you want to maybe take another path? Do you want to do things differently? Do you want things to be easier? Do you want things to be faster? Do you think want things to be slower? Do you want to change up your priorities? And how can you do that? How can you find more joy in the journey towards your destination? How can you make achieving your goals more joyful? How can you find a different path? How can you enjoy yourself more and then plot your path forward in a different way? Because achieving your goals may not be as meaningful to you if you hated every step of the way. If you are a stress-frazzled-about-to-burnout-mess then what does it matter if you achieved your goals? Because you are a mess, because you feel horrible. I do think that keeping an eye on the destination is important, otherwise we are not going to get there, but I think we also need to keep an eye on every step of the way, keep an eye on the journey, keep an eye on the progress, keep an eye on the process, keep an eye on how we are walking our journey towards this destination. We can do it by hustling, we can do it by being stressed, or we can take our time, we can stop along the way, we can have rest breaks, we can do it in a different time of year, we can change the priorities, we can do it when the weather is nicer, we can do it when things are flowing more, we can get different support, we can do it with friends, we can do it alone… shift things up so your journey is the journey that you want to experience on your way to the destination.

I really hope this episode has been useful, I think there is so much more I could probably dive into, but these are my first thoughts on my first few days back from the South Downs Way. I really look forward to re-releasing this book, I am going to do a whole second edition of this book and talk about all the things that I have learned, and you know I would like to bring that out to life and how we can apply these concepts to life and actually maybe that’s a whole book on its own. But I do think that there is a lot to be learned from walking our path in different ways and really choosing which path we want to walk and being mindful about each step. Is it the step that we want to take? There are so many metaphors here I could go on forever{laughing}, you are walking down the trail, there is a big puddle of mud, you can step around it or your can step through it, what are you going to do? If you are not paying attention to the path and you are zoned off, you are probably going to put your foot in mud or twist your ankle because you stepped on something weird or fall off a cliff, that would be terrible, but there were cliffs on the edge of my trail. And on the last day there were so many signs saying: don’t fall off the cliff, be careful. If you were totally distracted or if you were being silly and trying to take a selfie on the edge of the cliff it would be crumbly and you might fall off, that would be terrible, but things happen, clearly they happen or there wouldn’t have been signs. Again, that’s a metaphor for life, if you are not watching where you are going, you might fall off a cliff. So there you are, I don’t want to end it on that note. as you know my walk was totally uneventful in terms of injuries and getting hurt in fact I only had a couple of blisters (and they didn’t even require Compeed [plasters] which was fantastic!).

So yeah, bringing this back to what we want and what we don’t want, we don’t want to fall off a cliff, we do want to have a journey that brings us to our destination without any mishaps along the way and without any blisters and making the journey as joyful and pleasant as it could possibly be. We can choose the hard path, or we could choose the pleasant path, the joyful path. And I think that is one of the important things to learn in life, we get to choose which path we are going to take. Do we want to make it hard on ourselves or do we want to make it joyful? Hopefully, probably, you will want to live a joyful life, and walk a joyful path, I can assure you having walked the same trail two times and one of them being very painful and one of them being very pleasant, I much preferred the pleasant path because I enjoyed every step of the way and I think that’s what we are here to do is enjoy our steps through life.

So I am going to wrap this up because I feel I keep repeating the same thing and maybe that’s because I need to hear it as much as you need to hear it again and again, before it sinks in. But I encourage you to walk a joyful path and stop and reevaluate and review your progress early and often and review your path early and often and pay attention to your path and be mindful of where you are walking to make this life joyful.

So, hope you find this episode interesting and useful, please drop me a line and let me know what you thought, you can email me at [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there and let me know what path you are walking, what are your goals, what are your plans, what are your destinations and what your path you will be choosing to get there, I would like to hear. So, that’s all for now and remember to visit http://HollyWorton.com/321 for the show notes on this episode, thank you so much for listening.