Progress and Lessons – ElPropósito3 min de lectura

When the goal is the journey

Photo by Hayley Seibel on Unsplash

Last Sunday at this hour I was about to start a triathlon (a half Ironman) on Guatemala’s Pacific coast, in El Paredón. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous or afraid I wouldn’t finish. Neither fear held up, since I had four solid months of training with my coach behind me. What was different between my first Ironman in California and last week’s 70.3? The heat on the run played a huge part this time. And, as I wrote in my last post, I felt I was racing with no end in mind, no clear purpose and no reason to be there. How do you find the why of something, even in moments of great uncertainty?

Of course I had an end in mind. I was testing my training, and I came away with plenty of lessons. This race was part of something bigger that I may not have seen at the time. In November I plan to do my second full Ironman, and that one has had a very clear purpose from the day I signed up. What leads us to set goals with no purpose behind them? How did we end up chasing things without a clear direction? We’re used to getting our answers from the outside in, from society to ourselves, and we’ve done little or nothing to train our inner voice to give us those answers.

How do we listen to that inner voice? Many organizations have no clear vision, no true north showing where the company, institution or whatever body grew out of an initial idea is headed. An organization without a clear purpose (just like a person) will struggle to weigh its decisions or investments against anything. It lives in constant back and forth, looking like it’s moving ahead while, over time, it slides steadily back toward ruin or complete stagnation.

Something interesting happens when you have a clear vision and purpose for everything you plan and every opportunity you want to seize. Obstacles and challenges of every kind show up over time. That’s the nature of things. This week I was reading and reflecting on the idea that often, maybe most of the time, the goal is the journey itself, and our eyes belong on the progress we’re making. Trouble starts when we fix our gaze on the result and never look back at how far we’ve come. Progress is where the learning and the biggest chances to grow live. The milestones along the way hold our greatest potential to advance, and everything that will carry us forward.

With a clear purpose in life, it’s hard for a goal to fall out of line with it. You still need to define it, test it and work out, as my good friend Otto would say, "how much value you’re going to create and how much value you’re going to capture." I believe this last race created a great deal of value in my life, and I captured almost all of it through what I learned. I’m deeply grateful to God, to my little angel JD who was with me during the race, to my wife, my children, my coach, my families and everyone who stood by me along the way as I worked toward a goal. With every bit of progress someone was backing me, with every step I moved forward, and with every thought that crossed my mind I saw that the goal is often simply the journey, and the progress.

Warm regards,

Rodrigo Baccaro

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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