Success Quote by Curtis Carlson

Carlson’s line is corporate wisdom that tries to smuggle a philosophy of ambition into a comforting metaphor: if a goal is a journey, you can keep moving without ever having to admit you’ve arrived. It’s a neat reframing because it converts what could be a stressful, binary outcome (hit the number or fail) into an identity: you’re the kind of person who progresses. That’s why it plays so well in business culture, where momentum is both a morale strategy and a management tactic.

The subtext is less Zen than it sounds. Calling goals a “journey” lowers the psychological cost of constant escalation. It normalizes perpetual striving as healthy rather than compulsive, and it recasts dissatisfaction as discipline. “Each year I set a new goal” isn’t just self-improvement; it’s an operating system. In executive life, plateaus are dangerous: markets shift, shareholders get impatient, competitors copy your edge. The annual reset echoes the cadence of budgets, performance reviews, and strategic planning cycles. This is personal growth talk tailored to the fiscal calendar.

There’s also a subtle power move embedded here. If goals are ongoing journeys, the leader becomes the author of the route. You’re not judged only by whether you land at a fixed endpoint; you’re judged by your ability to keep the organization in motion and to define what “next” should be. It’s motivational, yes, but it’s also a way of making continuous change feel inevitable, even virtuous.