The society we live in has been molded in a way that people seek instant results. Gone are the days when we were told to work hard and stay patient, to persevere and work consistently until we reach some level of success. Now it seems those principles are slowly becoming obsolete.
This is why it is hard for most of us to stick with the goals we have set to ourselves. That is one reason why most of us hate putting in the work.
And there's a terrible problem: we care so much about the results that if nothing is happening by the time deadline we set for ourselves, we immediately surrender.
We are like a marathon runner who disliked running but craved the high of the finish line.
We’re wired to focus on outcomes, in no small part because of our education system.
Year after year, we study for a grade or the approval of our teacher. As students, we usually ask, “Will this be on the exam?” But I get it. Our futures depend in part on the number of gold stars we collect in our schools.
So what would happen if we adjusted our mindset and instead of focusing so much on the result, we turn our attention to the process? What happens when we focus on the process?
Take a look at some of the things that will change for you.
You start to enjoy the work
Having your eye on the results has a way of making you hate the work you have to do to get it. That is because you are looking to the future where your results are and the fact that we can’t get them this very minute makes us unhappy with what we are doing now.
But on the other hand, when you begin to pay attention to the process and focus on building the skills that you need to use in order to get the results, you will begin to enjoy the process. You will begin to live in the present and begin to enjoy the moments that you may have not paid attention to before. Focusing on process will let you engage more deeply with the present and you will get to experience it more fully, and that will help you learn faster and experience life more completely.
You take back control
In the 1990s, Christopher Nolan — the director of Inception, Interstellar, and most recently, Dunkirk — was a struggling director with only a massive stack of rejection letters to show for his name. His career began to turn around after his focus shifted from outcome to process:
“What I learned very early on, and I’m very grateful for the lesson, is that I could only be making films for the sake of making films. To only engage in telling a story for the process of telling the story, not for the gold star at the end. You have to cross into this world of just pleasing yourself, just doing something because you want to do it.”
An outlook focusing on the ‘results’ is mainly an outlook based on external factors.
Once you focus on an external factor as the basis for your happiness or motivation, you will only retain part of the control that you could have. You leave the important part to someone else or something else.
But the moment you switch from external factors to internal factors you will begin to take FULL control of your progress.
This is what focusing on doing the work does. ‘Whether you give your best effort or not is entirely within your power’ and you will soon realize this.
An internal focus of control leads to empowerment, higher self-esteem, and success, all of which contribute meaningfully to life satisfaction.
You rebuilt your self-confidence
The moment you realize that whether you achieve your goal or not is entirely up to you, is the moment upon which you hand over the keys of building your self-confidence from someone else and place them into your own hands.
An approach derived on working and not complaining will make you start working on your skills in order to make them better. This will in turn build a sense of confidence in you.
You’ll worry less about the future because you’ll know that you’ll be happy regardless of the outcome of any given situation or event. You’ll become free to get out of your comfort zone, to be spontaneous and take risks. And being unattached to a specific outcome means you won’t be needy, or get upset when things don’t go as you had hoped.
Nothing makes you appreciate anything more than working and earning it, no matter how much we try to believe otherwise.Without knowing how to handle failure or setbacks, we will never appreciate success when it presents itself.
So instead of getting frustrated and impatient with your results which will eventually lead to you giving up and complaining, why not change you approach and focus on the process and enjoy the struggle to get what you want.
Behavioral research shows that human beings have a tendency to return to their pre-success level of happiness through a process called hedonic adaptation.
Fixating on the outcome is mostly leading to focusing on a negative result
I never looked at the consequences of missing a big shot. When you think about the consequences you always think of a negative result! - Michael Jordan -
We’re conditioned to focus on negative feedback and criticism, so with an outcome-focused approach, we end up beating ourselves up when reality falls short of our soaring expectations.
What’s more, when we focus on outcomes, activities that we normally love become chores. I love writing, but it stops being fun when I mechanically view it as a means to more page views, higher conversion rates, or increased social media shares.
When we switch to a process-focused mindset, we condition ourselves to derive intrinsic value out of the activity. The process becomes its own reward. We get into a state of flow and lose the sense of time as the hypnotic power of process draws us in.
An outcome-focused mind is an impatient mind
A focus on outcomes inspires grandiose fantasies. We become mesmerized by the thought of achieving fame, getting a coveted job, or finding the perfect partner. So we begin searching for shortcuts, life hacks, and advice from self-proclaimed gurus who peddle myths.
Instead of setting goals and focusing on them, ask: What’s the process that might get me to this goal? Then obsessively focus on the process and forget about the goal.
Take a look at any successful person’s biography and you’ll find that there is no magical “it.” No overnight success. No one “a-ha!” moment. A process-focused mind is the mark of anyone who has achieved anything extraordinary.
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