Success is a Journey, not a Destination by Adam Khoo

Wow! A whole week has zoomed past since my last post. Time really flies when you are super busy and having lots of fun. So, here are some updates about what’s happening in my life and business…

A couple of days ago, I watched Adam Sandler’s latest blockbuster ‘Click’, I thought it would be Sandler’s usual mindless, slapstick and vulgar comedy (which I love to unwind to by the way!). To my surprise, it was not only funny but extremely philosophical and life transformational…if you actually look deep beyond just the comedy and into the message it is delivering.

The show was about a success driven architect (played by Adam Sandler) who like many people, looked forward to achieving his career goals of becoming a partner and a CEO one day. In his quest for career success, he had to constantly sacrifice his time for family and the hours of hard work that came with it. However he dreaded having to go through all the months and years of hard work, slogging and worry before he could eventually get his promotion. He wished that he could just skip through his family commitments 9when they cropped up) so he could just get his work done and achieve his goals.
So, it was a dream come true when a strange man from nowhere appeared and gave him a Universal Remote that could fast forward/pause/mute and rewind every part of his life that he did not like to go through. At first, it seemed like a dream come true when he could fast forward through his wife’s nagging, time he had to spend with his children and parents, hours working on his project and even fast forwarding through sex. He was so impatient on achieving his goal that he kept fast-forwarding through all the tough times so that he could only experience THE END RESULT, theta he thought would make him happy. During fast forward mode, his mind would go on ‘auto-pilot’ where he just ‘went through the motions’. He just wanted to reach his life’s destinations without having to walk the journey.

After fast forwarding through A WHOLE YEAR of LIFE and feeling the happiness of finally receiving his dream promotion to partner, he discovers that his children have all grown up and apart from him. His wife has lost her feelings from him as he acted like a zombie (his mind was on autopilot). After his constant habit of fast forwarding, the Universal remote develops a ‘habitual memory’ and keeps fast forwarding through all his family time, all his work hours to only arrive at his goals. The next thing he knew, the Remote fast forwarded TEN YEARS into the future within a split second, where he becomes CEO of his company. Except when he reaches there, he finds that his wife had left him, his parents have died and his children have all grown up and moved on. He was so fixated on getting his goal that he was not there to experience all these events. Soon after, he suffers a heart attack and his minutes away from death.

It was there that he realized that his whole life had passed him by in a blink of an eye and that he would trade all his goals for the chance to go back and experience every single event that he fast forwarded past.

In real life, many people do the same thing. We think that it is reaching the end of the rainbow and finding the pot of gold that would make us happy. We think that it is only the day that we make that $1 million or the day we become CEO that we become happy. So we miserably slog through each day or our lives, forgetting & ignoring the beauty of the people and events around us. However, the truth is that the happiness derived from reaching a goal may seem super exciting for a few moments. However, the next thing we know, we must pursue and reach another higher goal in order to feel that short happiness once again.

If you think about it, we spend 99% of the time chasing a goal and 1% of the time achieving it. If you only allow yourself to enjoy and feel happy when you achieve a goal, then you are only happy during 1% of your life. That’s crazy! You allow yourself to feel miserable 99% of the time in order to feel happy 1% of the time.

This show truly reminded me that success is about enjoying and savoring each and every step of the journey; the pleasant times and the bad. The easy and the tough times. I remind myself to enjoy every moment I am on stage speaking, listening to my wife (even when she nags), watching my children play, writing my books, dealing with huge challenges, training my participants and managing my staff. I find that when I truly enjoy each step of the journey that I am truly successful.