The oft-used metaphor “Life is journey” is perhaps now considered overly cliché; nevertheless, it’s true. Like a road trip off into the unknown, our lives can have many hills and valleys, lefts, rights, long flat straightaways where we can see far ahead and tight blind curves where we have no idea what’s next. The road can be wide or narrow; conditions can be wet or dry, smooth, rough, slick, bumpy and lurking with potholes. Beware those lurking potholes. In our life’s journey we sometimes find ourselves off-road and on occasion there are times where we wonder if there is a road at all. 

Also, like all journeys, time marches alongside. Unfortunately, until we can find a wormhole or wrinkle in the fabric of the space-time continuum to exploit, there are no do-overs, rewinds, reset buttons, no second chances or return to start. We have one life to live and the clock is always ticking and just as the sappy soap opera philosophizes, “…like sands through the hour-glass, these are the days of our lives.” 

So, let’s pause for a moment and conduct a current state assessment. How is your life journey going so far and how are the sands of time passing for you?  Is your life a beach or more like skidding across 30-grit sandpaper?  Are you a pothole magnet? Do you suspect that the chichi chick’s voice articulating directions in your life’s GPS is not all that bright or worse, is duplicitously conspiring to lead you astray? Recalculating. Maybe your life journey so far is going awesome, and you feel the stimulating, carefree, York Peppermint Patty® sensation of speeding down an isolated stretch of the German autobahn in a Lamborghini convertible with the fresh, crisp wind blowing through your hair.

Well, no matter what your journey’s past has been to this very moment in time or unique grain of sand now passing through the proverbial hourglass—be it great, average, a bad trip straight out of hades, or some combination thereof; we all have the same desire for the future and the rest of our life journey—to have an awesome adventure!

With that intent and goal, a few questions should immediately come to mind.  If life is a journey, what’s the best method of travel? How can I have or how can I maximize my chances to have this awesome adventure in my journey through life? What is the way? Is there just one best way or are there many successful paths one can seek? What does such a fulfilling life look or feel like and what are the metrics of success that define it?

Well dear reader, I’m glad you asked…well OK, technically I asked but hopefully you were right there along with me as that is the purpose of this next series of blogs. Through a reasonably entertaining investigation, we shall philosophically, analytically, and somewhat good-humoredly contemplate the definition of a most excellent adventure in our journey of life and how we can best achieve it. We shall attempt to define what principles or rules of the road we need to follow to navigate life’s various twists and turns and associated road conditions.

Our goal is to define the keys for an exciting, exceptional adventure in our journey through life and to create a strategy and roadmap for the very best way to travel that will maximize our personal fulfillment and potential along the way.

This is a rather ambitious undertaking and though our approach may be playful as we ponder the possibilities, our expectations are profound.  In such an extraordinary endeavor, we must also address a fundamental question in determining a life strategy: What about God?

Does God exist? Does it matter? If God exists, what role should the Creator of the cosmos play in our life? Do we view God as our Father or the Force to be with you?  Should our strategy be to draw very close to God or is it better to keep a safe distance–perhaps just have God on speed dial as our emergency roadside assistance when we encounter trouble or get stuck in a ditch?  Maybe the best strategy is a moderate approach having God neither too close nor too far away but somewhere in-between.

These are all worthwhile questions to consider and they’ll need to be answered to create a strategy for an exhilarating and fulfilling life journey. This is the goal of every human—to maximize their potential and fulfillment in life. So now, I should pause to inquire? What’s your goals, your life strategy, your definition of success? What should they be?

In the next series of blogs, we’ll attempt to address and answer these questions. So, buckle up (remember, safety first) and let the journey begin…