How to Appreciate the Journey Towards your Dreams
How to balance being grateful for the present with creating the future you desire
Welcome! I’m Rachael Gaibel, a career, life + wellbeing coach, consultant and content strategist/writer. Find Possibility is a monthly newsletter focused on: finding possibilities to create change that matters to you, personal growth, wellbeing, creative expression, and more. If it resonates, please share with others.
When we want to create change in our life and work, there’s tension. A tension between where we are now and getting somewhere. A tension when we envision a future that feels different, better than right now. There are times we fixate on the distance between the present and the future possibilities. Especially if we feel stuck, held back or off-track.
Instead, I want to share one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned about pursuing our dreams: how to appreciate the journey.
Appreciating the journey is aspirational. Doing so is not always our default. But, in learning how to, we can be more intentional. We can enjoy our entire journey to create change and live our dreams.
This is the final post in the series on having a slow growth approach to change. One of the essential nutrients is to appreciate the journey. Slow growth means to focus on creating small changes consistently over time to make progress on your dreams and goals. This ultimately leads to the rapid growth of blooming.
Here’s an example of this tension:
July 2020: Minutes after my husband, daughter and I started our hike, our then two-year-old daughter began squirming in the hiking backpack. She demanded, “Down! See flowers!” After my typical distraction tactics didn’t work, we gave in. Hoping to take a few minutes to stop before continuing on our hike.
Once we put her down, she pointed and said, “More flowers,” walking a few feet to see the wildflowers. She lightly touched them, mesmerized. We took a few photos.
I was still in the frame of mind: this is a quick delay until we get back to hiking. I was getting impatient. Wanting to move. To hike. To get somewhere. I kept attempting to get my daughter to either walk or go back in the backpack. She had no interest.
A couple of minutes later, I looked up to see what was ahead on the hiking path. For the first time, I truly noticed the awe-inspiring scenery in Crested Butte, Colorado. With abundant wildflowers. Lush grasses. Panoramic mountain views. The post’s photo is from that view. I stood there, soaking it in. Savoring what was right in front of me.
And suddenly, it didn’t matter if we got anywhere else. Right here was enough. Right here was beautiful.
I share this example because it shows how each of us (including me) can default to wanting to get somewhere without noticing and enjoying what is right in front of us.
We tend to struggle in our journeys when there are delays or when we aren’t making the progress we want to. But, what if we could focus some of our attention on enjoying what’s right in front of us?
Appreciating the journey means balancing both having gratitude for the present with creating the future we desire.
Connecting the Journey to a Slow Growth Approach
Just as the growth process of a flower begins underground during the seed stage, when we aspire to grow, our growth progression begins internally. While the first changes we make it might not be visible, such as working with blocks and creating the right conditions for growth, they build the foundation for all future growth. The right conditions for growth are:
Dream about what’s possible
Connect with what matters to you, your core values
Focus on your wellbeing
Shift your Mindset
The next phase of the growth journey becomes increasingly visible as you take more external action, like when a plant springs forth. This phase still depends on nurturing the right conditions to take grounded, intentional action. When you start to live your dreams in small ways, it brings vibrancy and aliveness.
This phase is based on:
Building the courage to start, with an experimentation mentality.
Strengthening the connection to yourself to show up for yourself fully.
Creating one change at a time to honor your dreams and goals.
Reframing challenges you encounter as opportunities for growth.
The last phase is rapid growth, the blooming. This is where you shine your spark of light, making the changes you seek to experience living your dreams on a consistent basis.
While there is a tendency to want to know how long each growth phase will take, they don’t have set timeframes.
There are times the internal phase of slow growth progresses quickly; other times, we can be steeped in it for months or years. Additionally, rapid growth is typically not a one-time event. It has its own process and energy, like when many of the seeds previously planted begin to bloom simultaneously.
To reach sustainable rapid growth without burning out is not based on multiplying our efforts. It’s formed from taking a slow growth approach, which leads to blooming.
How to Appreciate the Journey:
Appreciate the good every day: Focusing on what’s good is not our natural instinct. Our brains are wired to look for what’s wrong, which is due to our brain’s negativity bias. That’s why it’s vital to have intentional practices to notice and appreciate the good in your life and in relation to your dreams. Focus on: gratitude, acknowledge and celebrate making progress, and savor positive experiences. Write it down. Soak it in. Doing so will expand your gratitude for the present.
Live your dreams now: The more you can experience the essence of your dreams now in small ways, the more you’ll appreciate your own journey. Take small, intentional action steps in alignment with what matters to you to honor your dreams. Additionally, as you envision the future you desire, reflect on what you could do next to bring it forth.
Trust the process: Not all dreams unfold at the same pace. If it feels like progress is slow, focus on where you have agency and hold outcomes outside of your control loosely. Keep doing your own inner work with blocks that arise, as inner growth could precede outer results. And most of all, choose to trust the journey is unfolding in its right time.
Reflection: What’s one small way you could live your dreams now?
To uncover your dreams, check out the reflection at the end of my previous post: How I Started Living a Life True to Myself.
People overestimate what they can do in a day. People underestimate what they can accomplish in five or ten years.
It’s common to think we should be able to do more within one day than is sustainably possible without burning out. Unfortunately, we can be hard on ourselves for not doing more, more.
What if instead we choose to believe what we do within a day is enough?
Taking small, consistent action will build over time. It’s especially important to start small if you are honoring your dreams in addition to having an already full life.
The opportunity is to expand our belief in what could be possible longer term: in one, five or ten years.
In 2022, I found my journaling exercise from 2015 where I envisioned my ideal future five years out. While I had internalized the vision, I hadn’t read it in years. I was incredibly struck that much of the vision had come to life. And, how since then, deeper layers of dreams had emerged.
At the time I completed the 2015 journaling exercise, my dreams felt unattainable. To my surprise, as I began taking small steps within my control towards my dream of improving my wellbeing, it brought greater appreciation for my whole life in the present. Even without yet attaining my dreams of becoming a mother or changing careers.
Focusing on what was in my control—my personal growth and wellbeing—helped me ground in being grateful for the present and simultaneously take a long-term view towards parenthood. Otherwise, when I got overly caught up in not getting pregnant each month, I didn’t cope as well. I suffered more.
As I shared in my last post, making one small change 10 years ago was the start of transforming my life in ways beyond what I thought possible. We often don’t know what the catalysts to for sustainable change will be. But, if we take one resonant step after another, our path towards our dreams will unfold.
I hope you know your dreams are worth pursuing for the long term.
I hope you also remember you are right where you need to be to live your dreams now.
Want support on your journey towards your dreams? Contact me for a free exploratory coaching call to learn more about how coaching could help create change that matters.
So many valuable insights here. Love the way you describe slow growth change like a seed, and appreciate the reminder to trust the process. That feels like the perfect analogy after doing some spring planting. 🌱Thank you!