Choosing Process Gets Results

Want to know what’s great about positive results? Everything. Everything is great about winning the game, losing the body fat, getting the girl, getting the promotion, and whatever positive result you can think of. We will never stop liking positive results, but getting them is notoriously elusive.

The tricky thing about getting these results is that placing focus on the thing you want (the results) is often the worst strategy to actually achieving what you want. The irony makes this seem like a giant prank on humanity. “So, you’re telling me focusing on the thing I want is the worst way to get it? I see what you did there..”

This is a poor strategy mostly because it offers no handles or control. There’s nothing about wanting to win the game that gives you control about who wins. There’s nothing about wanting to lose weight that has any weight-loss capacity.

This lesson means so much to me that how my body looks, whether I win a strongman contest or not, how much money is in my bank account, or whether or not I can get my book published is of no concern to me. Those are desirable results, but they are of no concern not because I don’t want positive outcomes in these areas of my life, it’s because if I really want them my focus must be on the controllable process rather than the end result. If I eat the way I know how to eat, get in the gym for my four training days, show up ready to coach, and produce quality writing then everything I mentioned is handled.

Thinking about the former makes me a hopeful wannabe subject to the dismal odds of luck. Thinking about the latter makes me an active participant in perpetual progress towards the things I want, as well as things I couldn’t have imaged I could ever want.

 

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach