As usual, I was having a discussion with one of my kids, this time, my 16 year old daughter, and in the process of me teaching her, she taught me something.
You see, she wants to be a photographer, she is very creative and I know she would do well. Additionally, she wants to travel; like all over the world travel. While it would be hard knowing she might be across the world in Canberra, Australia, I am fully encouraging it (I don’t know much but I do know not to hold back on dreams, especially of kids).
To augment this, I am having her look up three photographers that she would like her career to mimic. This exercise has taken some time and I would say it is largely due to my fault for not clearly defining the “why”.
At the dinner table, I started up the discussion with asking what is the single most important component of going on a trip.
Here were three of the responses:
- Planing
- Packing
- Money
I agreed those were all important (especially the planning) but there was something even more crucial and specific that is the number one thing.
KNOW WHERE YOU ARE GOING
My analogy then came full circle as I explained just as when planning a trip, you need to have a destination defined, otherwise, you will literally go in circles. That doesn’t mean you can never change this destination, or when you do get there, you can’t decide on going to a different destination, but you do need to have one identified at the onset to start the journey. Similarly, with wanting to be a world traveling photographer, identifying examples of such people will allow to examine, research and plan your own journey to your destination.
I share this as we close on 2015 and look to 2016, my encouragement to you is to dream big. Dream big and identify your destination. This “destination” might be a physical achievement, it could be a new job, it might be a new (or breaking an old) habit. Refer back to the goal setting exercise I sent earlier. You might not get to your destination in 2016, or even in the following year, but I can confidently say that you can begin the journey, and the journey is usually just as rewarding as the arrival.
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