On Learning to Enjoy the Journey
Are you having fun yet?
โGod gave us this platform for a reason, letโs not waste it.โ - Michelle Obama
Why is it so hard to enjoy the journey? To have fun along the way, find joy, and be less attached to an outcome?ย
These questions have been rattling around in my brain lately; itโs partly due to my experience as an entrepreneur and partly in response to what Iโm hearing from others.ย
Itโs all too common for us to suffer from impatience and self-imposed pressure to โsucceedโ within a short time frame. We overwork ourselves, attach to the outcome, and forget to enjoy the ride. This can be true whether you work for yourself or are a maverick working inside an organization.ย
I recently polled a handful of people I know who have embarked on a business-building journey with two critical questions:
How do you feel now youโve begun? And how much time do you plan to give it?ย
Most responded to the first question with similar answers: โI love my work, but in running the business I feel: overwhelmedโฆoverworkedโฆunsure where to focusโฆ lacking structureโฆand I am working so hard to bring the money in so my efforts pay off โright away.โ
To the second question, How much time do you plan to give it? I was surprised when most responded with a 6-12 month time frame, with a few 18-month outliers.
Six to twelve months to build a business and expect it to be successful - no wonder youโre overwhelmed!
Thatโs like asking a newborn to become a full-fledged working adult in the time it takes for most to begin saying their first words and taking their first steps. Itโs also a recipe for not enjoying the journey. I say this all with honesty and kindness because I have been there.
Mission & Commitment
โAdopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.โ -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Iโm sure this will sound a little out of left field, but as I sit here writing at my table in Provence, I canโt help but be reminded of olive trees. Yes, olive trees; I knew nothing about them until I moved here where we have fifteen in our garden, all of which are bearing fruit this month.
While traveling last week, I was reading Carol Drinkwaterโs famous Provence memoir, The Olive Farm: A Memoir of Life, Love and Olive Oil in the South of France. In it, she shares her research on olive trees, including this passage:
โThese gnarled and characterful plants survive for centuries but commence production at a tortoiselike pace. They do not produce their first fruits until they are seven or eight years old and will not deliver their bounteous crops until fifteen, even twenty years old. For any farmer who is beginning from scratch, it is a long-term investment.โย
Imagine that - no fruit for seven or eight years and no reliable crop for fifteen to twenty!ย
To be clear, Iโm not implying that most small business owners should go seven to twenty years without their business generating revenue.
But most people I know are not running โget rich quickโ schemes. Theyโre going after some big vision, work that they expect will generate income, impact, and influence over time.
Iโve started to say that these people are, like me, building their lifeโs work. And I call it as such because, a bit like an artist, weโve each set an ambitious vision which will take time to achieve (if we can even ever fully achieve it).
To get there, weโre experimenting with different activities and, in most cases, planting seeds that require long-term nurturing.ย
By design, building your lifeโs work requires a long-term commitment.ย
So, perhaps a better set of questions for those of us who are building our lifeโs work might be: Whatโs your mission? How committed are you to it? And for how long?
Because if youโve got a clear mission and youโre committed to it for the long haul - say seven or eight years - or maybe even fifteen or twenty - then youโre already two steps ahead of many people. Now itโs time to settle in and enjoy the journey.
And, if youโre not committed to it for the long haul, it might be good for you to explore - or at least be clear with yourself - why youโre doing it.
Building An Opus
โCreativity takes courage.โ - Henri Matisse
Several new readers have asked me about my journey, and it seems natural to talk about it in the context of this article.
I left my corporate job in 2020. I was burned out by overwork and reorgs, having taken on new roles and promotions each year for five years straight. As if piling it on, around the same time, my mom died in a car crash, and the universe said, 'Tag, you're out,' as I collapsed after a full-on, enjoyable family holiday. I didn't know it back then, but my corporate life - and all of the ways I'd lived to support it - was over.ย
Since then, I've faced and overcome the demons of my traumatic childhood, moved from London to Provence, earned a degree in wine & gastronomy, studied mindfulness, transitioned into entrepreneurship, and learned that ambition need not come at the expense of self or well-being.
I've worked on myself a lot and have come out of that experience as a new person, consciously evolving and growing.ย
One of the critical steps I took along the way was to define my mission. I asked myself what I wanted my work - my efforts - to add up to over time; this isn't a specific 'job' per se, but rather a greater impact I want to achieve as a result.
Today, I direct my two decades of experience as a leader, facilitator, and coach and my expertise in learning, leadership, and workforce development towards fulfilling my mission: to support high-achieving people - especially women - to live and work on their terms without exchanging well-being for ambition. ย
Mine is a complex, long-term mission I can go after in many ways. I think of it as my life's work - my Opus. Although how I might fulfill this mission may change over time, right now, I'm investing my time and energy in the following four:
ExponentialChangemakers, a growing global network propelling women from early to mid-career, which I co-founded and launched eighteen months ago.
Exponential-by-Design is my private consulting, coaching, and advising practice, which I started in 2021. I work 1:1 with individuals and groups on personal, career & leadership development. And with organizations on global projects related to learning, education, workforce development, and gender equity.
Reimagining Life & Work: Lessons from Provence (this newsletter), which I launched in August (fusing two prior efforts).ย
And Lost in Princeton, Found in Provence, my forthcoming memoir, which is also a guide to breaking free from the trauma of growing up to live and work on your terms. (I launched this just three weeks ago.)
Looking across my portfolio, one thing is really obvious: although I bring decades of expertise, I'm in the early stages of building work that supports my long-term mission.ย
If I were an olive tree, I'd be a LONG way from bearing fruit! Yet, I've already had successes - and failures - which is as it should be because I'm engaged and doing the work.
So, why is it still so hard to continuously enjoy the journey?
That's the question I've faced on the page these past months. Now, with my mission and the long olive-tree view secured, here's a third pivot that's helping me.
Bite-Sized Consistent Progress
โHuman beings are works in progress that mistakenly think theyโre finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people youโve ever been. The one constant in our lives is change.โ
- Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness
I already continuously invest a lot of time and energy in adopting and challenging my mindset, managing my energy, developing my skills, and leveraging daily practices to support. If you need help with these, you may be interested in other essays Iโve written including, this one and this one.
Iโve also grown some thick skin, best expressed in author Maggie Smithโs recent post as โYouโre not for everyone, and thatโs okay.โย
In addition, whatโs helping me most now is intentionally creating my journey, and focusing on achieving bite-sized progress through consistency.
Hereโs how I got there:
For each of the areas of my work listed above, Iโve set a more comprehensive goal. Sometimes, that goal is very tangible - like completing my memoir by a specific year, for example, or writing one weekly newsletter.ย
In other cases, the goal may pertain to my self-development - a way of being, for example - or a specific skill I might want to learn. In each case, Iโve thought quite precisely about what โsuccessโ might look like or what the point of doing it at all is.
Then, I stepped back from my big-picture mission and those goals and thought about a much smaller period - the next six months or year, depending. I asked myself many questions - trying to figure out what I might want the journey to look like. Here are a few:ย
What might I like to learn or experience within that time frame?ย
Who would I like to meet?ย
What might I like to read or listen to, etc.?ย
Where might I want to go?ย
Who might I partner with? Or learn from?
How might I have some fun with all of this?
When will I take breaks?
How do I want to show up each day? What will it take to do that?
What mutually reinforcing experiences might I create?ย
And what progress might I then make toward the broader goals as a result?
Essentially, now that Iโm very comfortable with my big mission and goals, and have some solid building blocks in place, Iโm shifting my vision away from them to focus more attention on bringing the journey to life - with intention and in detail.ย ย
I started this process simply, in my journal, and even as I wrote the first few notes, my jaw relaxed, my neck and shoulders settled down, and my whole being shifted into a more positive state.
Taking stock and going through this exercise, albeit practical and detailed, felt great. Along the way I felt empowered, calm, and imaginative, and I was smiling. The result is that today Iโm feeling more comfortable being โin the journeyโ because Iโm taking more ownership of my journey, yet I also know full well that Iโm likely to change these best-laid plans along the way.
A few weeks in, Iโve settled into a new rhythm. A rhythm with consistency, because showing up each day and each week is the only way to achieve the dream. Like any well-planned travel, I am clear on my destination, and which path Iโm planning to navigate to arrival, yet staying very open and excited about how that destination may change over time and what else may happen along the way!
Travel together to go fast & far
โYou might have heard the proverb, โIf you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together..But what has become clear to meโฆis that the only way we can go both fast and far is together.โ - Jean Oelwang, Partnering
Pursuing - and achieving - your life's work is a massive ambition - more than most of us realize as we're doing it.
At the very least, it means waking up every day to take the road less traveled and relying on yourself as your guide. You've got to engage in ongoing personal development, fuel continuous creativity and confidence, and establish ruthless self-discipline and focus while also enjoying the ride.
I don't know about you, but I want more - better - company on this journey. Better inspiration! Better camaraderie! I want more wins to celebrate than my own and better support when in a rut.
Thatโs why Iโm excited to share here - with my subscribers first - that Iโm launching Project Opus, an intimate 10-week online accelerator program for high-achieving womenโprofessionals, solopreneurs, and entrepreneursโwho want to elevate and treat their lives, careers, or businesses as their Opus.
The program - and the intimate community - will provide dedicated time, a structure, and space to focus on yourself, your dreams for your life and your work, your value proposition, and your business - to compose your life's work - your Opus.
Over ten weeks, beginning with a January kickoff, you'll navigate through four separate yet interrelated stages: Connect, Dream, Compose, and Embark. My approach is strengths-based and draws upon elements of peer-reviewed, evidenced-based methods, including Appreciative Inquiry, Stanford Life Design, the work of William Bridges and Hermania Ibarra, The Blue Zones, Annie McKee, as well as my own proprietary tools.
In Project Opus, we'll inspire one another, have even more fun on this journey, and, together, keep honing the skills, knowledge, and habits of mind, body, spirit & heart required to achieve your most profound dreams.
I'm excited to be surrounded by and to learn from women who, like me, are called by an invisible force to pursue and achieve their life's work and catalyze a unique impact in the world.ย
This is the first cohort, and so I will be curating this intimate group with intention and giving it - and each member my full attention.
Want to know more about Project Opus? Let's connect! You can DM me here on Substack or LinkedIn, or if you receive this newsletter as an email, just hit reply.
As always, thanks for being here!
