Enjoy the Journey
Life lessons through sports.
6.26.23 | by Coach Mike Deegan
From Chapter 6 of Let It Rip!
Where does true happiness come from?
True happiness comes from internal accomplishments: relationships, finding meaning and purpose, service to others and connecting to causes larger than ourselves.
Modern day society tends to use social status, accumulation of wealth, trophies, fame and celebrity status to define success. I’m just as guilty. I have fallen prey to external validation.
But this is folly…
“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.”
— Sir Edmund Hillary
Lessons from the ledge
Alison Levine, in her Ted Talk, “Lessons from the Ledge” does a magical job explaining how the journey is important, not the result. On Levine’s first attempt at climbing Everest, her and her expedition group had to turn around just 200 ft. from the summit. The weather had turned dangerous. The group made the tough decision to abort the mission.
Several years later, Levine revisited the mountain and ultimately reached the summit. We would imagine that she was euphoric after completing the goal. It turns out she wasn’t, “Actually, it wasn’t that big of a deal.”
The real reward
During my senior year of college, our team lost in the National Championship game. Finishing as national runner-up was a great accomplishment, but it hurt to not finish first. There’s a big difference, at least externally, between winning it all and finishing in second place. We all know the saying, “Second place is the first loser.”
Five years later, this time as an assistant coach, I was able to scale my Mount Everest, and win a National Title. While it was a great feeling, I can relate to Alison’s take, “it wasn’t that big of a deal.”
To be clear: I don’t mean to minimize the accomplishment. Instead, I want to emphasize that the reward is the pursuit of excellence. It’s the relationships and connection that can only occur from working and persevering. That by aligning yourself to a group, sacrificing, and overcoming obstacles a deep experience occurs that is hard to put into words. The result is much less important than most would think.
Enjoy the journey
I believe our job is to create an experience—that’s it.
Labeling it “good,” “bad,” “positive” or “negative” is focusing too much on the external. Modern day life is very instant. We are in the “like or dislike,” “swipe left or right” generation. Very little, if any, time is given to process an event. Instead of an experience being just an experience, it must be labeled instantly.
What we can do? Create opportunities to pursue greatness. Look for opportunities to create a selfless environment where the members are connected to a mission larger than themselves.
Join me in embracing the journey.
Let’s be slow to define our experiences. More importantly, let’s be slow to have our children or loved ones define their experiences for us. Let’s exhibit faith that the world is conspiring in our favor. That roadblocks and negativity are part of the process. Let’s learn to love it all. Even the parts that we don’t necessarily understand. Our mission is to work toward meaningful internal goals: deep relationships, overcoming fears, and serving others instead of external validation. As Alison Levine states, “The summit isn’t important it’s the journey and lessons along the way and how you are going to use those lessons on the next mountain.”
Action step
Write down the worst experience in your life. Now, reflect on that experience, and see if you can identify a direct correlation to a trait you now exhibit and how that has served you well since this experience.
