Latest / YINWorldWide / Enjoy the Journey: The Warning I Couldn't Hear
Transcript
- YIN: This is Yin. And these are conversations about discipline, direction, and identity, and how they quietly shape who you become. My dad used to tell me something growing up. He'd say, Enjoy the journey. And if I'm being honest, I never really understood what he meant. I thought it was just one of those things that adults said like it'll all work out or everything happens for a reason. It sounded nice, however, it never landed. Because in my mind, the journey wasn't the point. The journey was what you had to get through to reach the destination. And the destination is where life started. Get the job, build the business, buy the House. That's where life was. Everything before it was the waiting room. And I know I'm not the only one who's thought that way. Listen to how people talk. Next weekend, next vacation, next year. There's always a next. and somewhere in there, without ever saying it out loud, you make a deal with yourself. I'll enjoy this when I get there. That's the deal. And nobody signs up for it consciously. It's just the arrangement you're operating under. the problem is there keeps moving. You hit the goal, and almost immediately your mind builds another one. Not because you're ungrateful, but because that's what human beings do. We adapt. What was impossible becomes normal. What was extraordinary becomes expected. Last year's dream becomes this year's baseline. And I want to be clear because this is where a lot of people take the wrong exit. The problem is an ambition. Ambition built everything that you're looking at. It built businesses. It moved families out of situations that would have swallowed them. With that ambition, very little gets accomplished. the problem isn't that you have destinations. The problem is what you're expecting them to hand you when you arrive. Because look at the actual size of these things. a graduation lasts a few hours. Earning it takes years. A wedding lasts a day when a marriage can last a lifetime. Selling a business can happen in an afternoon when it can take years to build. You see, the destination is almost always the shortest part of the story. The journey is where nearly all of your life physically takes place. and it's the part we're most willing to rush. we spend years trying to skip the thing that is life to reach an afternoon. We treat the journey like the price we have to pay. When in reality, the journey is what we're buying. Here's what I actually want you to sit with. Chapters don't tell you that they're ending. You don't know the last time your kids are gonna ask you to pick them up, but there is a last time. It already has a date on it. You just haven't been told, and you'll never know which day that is. You don't know the last family dinner before everyone's schedules become too complicated to come together. You don't know the last day your company is just a handful of people chasing an idea. You don't know the last Saturday morning where everyone you love is healthy and under the same roof. Life doesn't announce when chapters end, it just turns the page. Maybe that's what a chapter really is. Not a period of time, but a version of yourself. And the strange thing about becoming someone new. Is that you rarely notice who you stopped being. That means something uncomfortable. You are living inside a chapter right now that one day you'll wish you could step back into. Maybe it's the apartment you're desperate to leave. Maybe it's the business you're convinced is too small. Maybe it's the chaos of raising your kids. Maybe it's having your parents one phone call away. Maybe it's simply the version of yourself you're becoming right now. You don't know. And that's the point. the chapter you're trying to get through. May someday become the chapter you do anything to experience one more time. And I'll be honest with you about something. If you asked me right now which chapter quietly closed on me, I couldn't tell you. I don't know. And that's the part that bothers me the most. Because I know something ended. Probably more than one thing. I just don't know what they were. maybe it was the season of building the business when everything still felt impossible. Maybe it was the last stretch before responsibility started outweighing possibility. Maybe it was the last version of myself before I became the person I am now. Honestly, I don't know. Not because nothing changed, but because I was too busy moving to notice it changing. I was head down, looking at the next goal, solving the next problem, looking forward to next week. The pages kept turning while I was too busy reading the sentences in front of me. And I think that's true for almost everybody listening. We don't miss these chapters because we don't care. We miss them because we're living them. Life doesn't stop long enough to tell us, pay attention, you're going to miss this. And here's the part I have to be honest about. Understanding this hasn't fixed it for me. I'm still moving. I'm still building. Knowing the lesson doesn't make me notice every chapter while I'm inside it. Maybe there are people who have that figured out. I just haven't become one yet. Now, back to my father. For a long time I thought I had ignored him, that I was young and I wasn't listening. That's not what happened. I couldn't hear it. Because enjoy the journey isn't information. It isn't a tip. Those three words are the compressed version of everything a person learns by losing chapters. And at that time, I hadn't lost any. I had nothing for that sentence to attach to. He wasn't giving me advice. He was giving me a warning from further up the road. in the only words small enough to carry. And he had to know that it wouldn't land. he'd been my age. He knew what that sentence sounded like to somebody who hasn't paid for it yet. However, he said it anyway. That's the part that gets me now. because that means this doesn't transfer. Not really. Every generation pays full price for it. There's no shortcut where I tell my people what I know and they get to skip the tuition. They'll hear it the same way I did as something adults say, which puts me in the same position he was in. I'm going to say it to them anyway. So let me bring this home. This isn't a call to slow down. I'm not telling you to lower your ambitions. I'm not telling you to stop building. Honestly, I wouldn't take that advice either. When my dad said enjoy the journey, I always thought he was talking about happiness, but he wasn't. I think he was telling me where life actually happens. Not at the destination, not at the milestone, not at the finish line, but here, inside the chapter that won't tell you when it's ending. and that's what everything we talk about on this show has been pointing at without saying it. your identity isn't waiting for you at the summit. It's being built right now in whatever you're in the middle of. Your direction is only ever walked in the present. There's no other place to take a step. And your discipline isn't preparing you for your life. Most days, most years, it is your life. So the question I want to leave you with isn't whether you're enjoying the journey. It's harder than that. The question is. What's already ended that you haven't noticed yet, you won't be able to name it. Neither can I. But one day it'll surface out of nowhere. You'll realize a door closed years ago and nobody told you. And in that moment, you'll understand exactly what my father was trying to tell me. One more thing before we go. My father is still here. and I could have ended this episode without telling you that. I could have left him a man in a story, something I remembered from a long time ago. But that would make me a hypocrite. Because everything I just spent this episode saying comes down to one thing. You don't get told which conversation is the last one. So I'm not going to wait for the right moment because there isn't one. That's the lesson. Dad, I understand it now. You said it for years and I couldn't hear it. I've lost some things now, and I get it. Thank you for saying it anyway. This is yin. If this resonated, share with someone who needs to hear it. Not everyone, just someone who's ready. You can find Yin Worldwide Podcast on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. And if you want to go deeper, visit our website at liveyin.com. That's www.livin.com. Subscribe if you're committed to the work. If not, that's fine too. This isn't for everyone. Remember, move with intention.