“Are we there yet?” “How much farther do we have to go?” “Can you please go faster?”

Anyone who has taken a long trip or car ride with anxious children or impatient adults has heard these questions and similar comments or complaints many times over.

It seems that many people want to arrive at their destination without actually going through the journey.

It’s like saying we want to win without playing the game.

Where is the fun in that?

Whether they suffer from a need for instant gratification or have a belief in teleportation like “Beam me up, Scotty,” they are missing everything that makes arriving at our destination worth the journey and all of the experiences it took to get us there.

Could you imagine if the coin toss in a football game actually decided the outcome?

The players returning to the locker room, high-fiving each other, and passionately talking about the way the referee flipped the coin, how it bounced on the turf, and how they were racked with nerves and excitement waiting for the heads or tails outcome.

That’s not how it works.

They want to go back to the locker room a little battered and bruised, muddy and sweaty, and talk about the amazing plays, big hits and spirit of the game.

They want to share in their experience of the journey.

Would we really buy a season pass or lift ticket so that we could take the chairlift up and then immediately ride it back down? No way.

We want to feel the pull of gravity, the steepness of the hill, the snow under our feet as we ski or snowboard down the mountain.

We want to set our edges, make sweeping turns, fly through the powder, and maybe take in a few bumps along the way.

We want the journey of getting to the bottom so that we can get back on the lift and share the stories of our last run with our friends during the ride and again with everyone who will listen at après ski at the end of the day.

While we are on our journey, it is also important that we will fail sometimes, have setbacks and even lose sometimes.

If I stick with the football analogy, there hasn’t been an undefeated Super Bowl winner since 1972.

But 40 teams have won the championship since then, all with losses on their record.

And how many of us have caught an edge in the middle of great ski run and wiped out?

So, on our journey and as we grow, we must be willing to fail, just as long as we learn from the setback and keep moving in the direction of our destination.

Lastly, we need to have that destination clearly in our hearts and minds because as we move toward our ultimate goal, we will reach mini-destinations along the way. It is kind of like aiming for the moon and hitting a star.

I would love to hear all about your journey and your destination at gotonorton@gmail.com and I hope it will be a better-than-good week for each of you.

Michael Norton, a resident of Highlands Ranch, is the former president of the Zig Ziglar organization and CEO and founder of www.candogo.com.