Scott Porad

It’s my birthday today, and yesterday my family came over to celebrate.  As I was waiting for them to arrive, I sat on my front deck for a bit thinking about the past year, and the one coming.

Where my thinking let me is to the phrase I find myself saying nearly every day: the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  Typically, that phrase is the motivation I use to jump in and get something started, but this time it was different.

On a journey of a thousand miles, there are many steps in between the first and last.  What occurred to me is that sticking with the journey and persevering is just as hard as starting it, if not harder.

Often I’m discouraged because I haven’t arrived at my destination, haven’t achieved my goals.  But, many of the goals we have in life don’t have an actual destination.  I suppose really the discouragement is because I fail to see how the current step is helping me along my way to my destination.  Perhaps the phrase should be the journey of a thousand miles takes a million steps.

My goal for the coming year is look at the glass half-full in this regard: to become better at appreciating how what I’m doing is moving me toward my destination, as opposed to the half-empty view of only looking at how I have not achieved my goals yet.