The Payoff

Crossing the finish line. Lifting the trophy. Receiving the promotion. Walking down the aisle. The first big purchase. The first quarter of profitability. These accomplishments are followed by feelings of relief, happiness, and overpowering joy. The payoff is a combination of every aspect of deliberate effort, each decision, and everything else in your life which has taken you directly to the point where you currently are. The payoff is the light at the end of the tunnel we are trying to reach. It is the peak of the mountain. It is a great sense of accomplishment when we finally reach it. Often the payoff comes after years and years of effort, rarely is there an overnight success. The payoff is a feeling of accomplishment.

Do we chase the payoff or do we chase the feeling of achievement? Do we chase the payoff or the feeling of working day after day for the light at the end of the tunnel? Do we chase the payoff or do we chase the idea of starting anew, looking for what is next? The answers to these questions are all-encompassing for our reasons “why.” The answers are synonymous and one and the same. There is no one size fit all answer, we chase the payoff AND all of the other scenarios.

The emotions accompanying any payoff are individual to certain extents. No one person has walked the exact road you have, so no one person knows exactly how you feel when you accomplish. The payoff can be used and treated as a small win to keep us going or it can be used as a finishing point to then reflect upon. Regardless of how we individually interpret any payoff, there is no sense denying that achieving and accomplishing are emotions we crave as humans. We want to succeed and we want our hard work to transform into progress. We do not wish to remain stagnant nor do we wish to continue failing. We iterate and pivot our routines and processes so we are more likely to succeed in the future. We celebrate our small wins so that we are able to squeeze out extra motivation to keep pushing for the big payoff.

The payoff closes one passage in our lives and flips the page to what is next. We chase the payoff, we chase the feelings accompanying the payoff, but then we find ourselves chasing what is next. There is no quench to our efforts once we get in the habit of chasing a payoff. We chase what is next for that next payoff. We chase that next payoff for what comes during the journey. Chase the payoff or chase the journey, it is all the same.