Ralph Waldo Emerson is often credited for the famous quote "Life is a journey, not a destination."
The quote is unfortunately often used as generic motivation about how beautiful life is or as an inspirational quote under your senior picture in the high school yearbook.
Josh Ellis, the editor-in-chief of Success magazine, however, argues that it actually represents a modern attitude toward success.
In this spring's issue of Success, Ellis discusses his own journey of success and how it never turned out to be about the destination at all:
"Based on my personal experience and my understanding of [this magazine's] values, I have to say this: Success is not the goal. Success is the process. The journey. The way you feel and the energy that is created on your way to whatever your goal may be. It's you, striving for something."
Tony Robbins similarly espouses the idea that "Progress equals happiness. Even if you are not where you want to be yet. If you are on the road, if you're improving, if you're making progress, you're going to love it. You're gonna feel alive."
Both gentlemen argue that the end goal only matters because it inspires you to pursue it, and that the actions, lessons, and experiences within that pursuit is the true marker of success.
Success is the whole tapestry. All of the different colored threads, dyes, images, frays, etc. that go into the final product.
Acknowledging the success of the journey relieves you of the pressure to make sure that the end goal of that journey is the ultimate, end-all-be-all singular one emblem of achievement because, in reality, the actions, lessons, and experiences along the way will always affect your idea of what that final outcome will look and feel like.
Much like how a writer writes a whole novel without knowing how it is going to end until the story gets there, this new success mindset presents the opportunity for you to leave the outcome open-ended and for you to leave yourself open minded to whatever other opportunities may arise along the way.