Direction Determines Destination: Why Feeling Stuck Doesn’t Mean You’re Failing

Do you ever feel frustrated because you’re experiencing the same stumbling blocks you faced last year? And you thought you’d dealt with those…but here you are again. Yuck.

I am a life coach. I hear this complaint over and over. We work on something, my client and I. There’s a shift. Life is good. My client feels motivation and freedom, and then, a year later: Bam. They’re back where they started.

Or they feel that way, anyhow. But I see so much difference.

Today I want to share a quote with you and the story I heard when I listened to Jim Rohn—one of the granddaddy’s of the personal development movement—offered to all of us gathered that day.

Jim Rohn’s quote is, “Direction determines destination.” And I remember him telling us that, “You can’t change your destination overnight; but you CAN change your direction. And direction is what determines your eventual destination.”

Then he told us something about a plane’s guidance system that I didn’t know.

A plane takes off from LA bound for NYC. The pilot aims that plane eastward with a bit of a northerly trajectory. But here’s the thing: the vector that plane is pointed at any one minute might be off by a degree or two.

Well, as you’re taking off from LAX, flying all the way across the country, if your vector is off by one degree, you might land as far away as Washington DC or in Portland, Maine. One degree can make a big difference when you’re traveling a long way.

So that pilot, keeps adjusting the vector of the flight: always eastward, but now a little bit more northerly, now a bit more south. Back and forth that pilot adjusts the plane’s vector: it’s direction. Over and over.

When the plane is leaving LAX the corrections might be larger, but as NYC gets closer and closer, the adjustments in direction become fine-tuned. Tiny adjustments to ensure the plane lands in the appropriate place.

 

Jim Rohn helps you make adjustments in your life

This is like your life. When there’s something far off you’re aiming for, like communicating better with your partner or raising a good kid, you are so far from your destination, that you might make sweeping changes back and forth in your life as you try to find your way.

To communicate better at first your only goal is speak up more often, or shut my mouth and listen with care. But over time, as you get closer to your metaphoric NYC, you can see clearer and you know more specific adjustments you want to make.

You begin to notice how your communication is polluted with dirty asks, so you focus on cleaning up the way you ask specifically and kindly for exactly what it is you want. And you encourage your partner to do the same.

When you’re just starting out parenting, you’re completely overwhelmed at the number of diapers you’re changing and the tiny amounts of sleep you’re getting. But as the years go on, and you can catch your breath, you realize that what you really want to do as a parent is to create a stellar human being, so you talk kindly and respectfully to this little human who has learned to use a toilet all on their own.

 

Let’s take this in two parts: Decide your direction and micro vector adjustments

When my client comes in saying, “Rebecca, I’m facing the exact same problems I was facing last year,” I invite her to pause.

Then to employ one of my favorite phrases borrowed from Byron Katie, “Is that true?”

Yes, she’s struggling again with co-workers and having trouble standing up for herself, but when we look carefully, we can see all the micro-successes she’s having:

She has a stock phrase that, when the conversation turns ugly, she simply says, “Sorry to interrupt, but I need to get back to my desk.” This phrase has helped her countless times to exit a yucky situation.

She’s learned to ask clearly and cleanly for precisely what she wants and she can easily give me three examples of how projects have gone more smoothly as a result.
She’s learned to listen to her own body budget so that she can identify those times when she needs something to eat, or a walk around the block before she enters a difficult meeting.

These are big changes! They kept her pointed at NYC rather than landing in Maine. But she can’t see them because she just keeps saying, “I want to be in NYC. I want to be in NYC.”

And the pain of not yet having arrived at her NYC hurts.

The disappointment she feels because she still struggles at work feels the same as the disappointment she felt when she first came into my office because she was having headaches every day.

When I point out these examples of all the times she was better able to aim herself at her NYC—happiness at work—she visibly relaxes. Her breath deepens.

She tells me how she hasn’t had a headache at work in months. She points out that she’s made a friend at work and they’ve even attended a couple concerts together on weekends.

“Could it be that you’re actually happy at work a good amount of the time?” I ask.

She nods. Slowly. Now she can see how she’s closer to her destination of the dream job and that fills her with pride.

For a bit.

Then she asks, “What are the directional moves I need to make now so that I can really be happy at work?”

This is when I introduce her to the word asymptote.

An asymptote is a mathematical concept that, when expressed as a line on a graph, the line gets closer and closer to the x axis, but never actually touches it.

This is when Jim Rohn’s metaphor of the plane falls short, because most of the things people are chasing in my office as a life coach don’t involve arrival points.

When my clients get really close to their life goals, they can see that the destination wasn’t about arriving at a particular place, but rather, the destination served to help them find direction.

Traveling in that found direction developed their character and helped them become the person they wanted to be.

When it comes to your happily ever after, there is never an arrival point. But there are thousands of moments that shape the vector of your life. When you connect all those points, they can form an asymptote when you are honing and honing the direction you want to travel.

If you’re trying to become a better communicator with your partner, you’ll never arrive at The Finished Communicator, but you WILL notice how the flavor of any conflict with your partner has completely shifted, or you will notice the intimacy you feel when you share details from your life.

If you’re trying to become a better parent, you’ll never arrive at The Perfect Parent, but you will notice how you’ve learned to control your temper, or how you’ve learned to see your kid for precisely who they are and love them right there.

 

Negativity bias

To Jim Rohn, who preached about the daily habits we can form to offer ourselves the best possible chance of reaching our potential, the effort of creating those habits is the true reward. Not the arrival point.

Here’s another Jim Rohn quote, “The ultimate reason for setting goals is to entice you to become the person it takes to achieve them.”

When your negativity bias tempts you to focus on the distance you are away from your goal, rather than seeing how close you are to your figurative NYC, I invite you to think of this asymptote.

Notice how your skills of perception are heightened, so although you are closer than ever to your goal, you are also brilliantly better at seeing the whole picture, and thus the gap.

Wave at the gap with friendliness. Hi gap! I see you welcoming me into more and more becoming. Thank you for the invitation.

And then remind yourself of all that you’ve already become.

Here’s an example:

If you’re trying to become a better communicator, ask yourself these questions:

1. What’s an example of how I’ve slowed the conversation down so that I was a more complete listener?
2. What’s an example of how I took time to ponder what I truly wanted so I could communicate with clarity?
3. What’s an example of how I have honed my communication, turning previously dirty asks, into clean asks?

If you’re trying to become a better parent, ask yourself these questions:

1. What’s an example of how I speak kindly to my child?
2. What’s an example of how I listen to my child’s truest needs?
3. What’s an example of how I’m giving my child doors that open to possibilities to help my child find their biggest possible life?

When you take a moment to mentally graph the progress you’re making on your journey, you combat that natural inclination you have to give into your negativity bias.