The Building Is The Best Part

My kids love building with Magna-tiles. But, as you can imagine, there can be a lot of fighting when one person’s building something and another one knocks it right over. The other day, my four year old was building with the Magna-tiles and my two and a half year old came in, tried to play with it and knocked it over.

I fully anticipated the four year old to melt down, get really frustrated with his brother and I would have to separate them and take the Magna-tiles away. Instead, my four year old said “That’s ok Parker, we can just build it again.” And me, as dad, wanting to praise that good perspective from a four year old said “Wow bud, that was really awesome!” His reply? “Yeah dad, building is the best part!”

Building is the best part.

All the best things in life have no end goal.

There is no end goal to parenting.

There is no end goal to marriage.

There is no end goal to fitness.

The building is the best part.

The process is where the enjoyment is found, not the outcome. There’s a reason why the cliché “it’s the journey not the destination” exists. It’s because that’s true for a lot of the things that really matter. So when we take the expectations of an outcome out of the equation, it frees us up to enjoy the process a lot more.

And you know what happened with my four year old? His brother stopped knocking things over and built it with him. They built something cooler than he would have done otherwise. So take the advice from the four year old: the building is the best part.

If you’re struggling with the journey, I recorded a whole podcast episode about building a heathy identity in order to stay consistent with your health and fitness routines.