Goals and Over-Attachment to Outcomes
Anyone who’s lived through the recent pandemic knows life is unpredictable. Yet our mind gives us the illusion that things will go the way we expect if only we plan and execute well enough. If we take certain steps, a sequence of events will unfold and we’ll achieve some highly desired outcome within a certain period of time.
If you have overachieving tendencies like I do, you may be trying to control not just your present situation but at least 5 years into the future - “after I get this promotion I will have enough experience to go to this type of company and make this much money, which will give me the platform I need to…” The irony is that the pivotal moments in my life weren’t anything I planned or could have foreseen.
We think outcomes matter so much because we have an impact bias: A tendency to overestimate the duration and impact of our emotional reaction to a future event such as a career achievement or a bank balance milestone. That’s one of the reasons high achievers sometimes get depressed literally the day after they sell a company or win an Olympic medal - reaching the goal doesn’t bring sustained happiness.
So shouldn’t we have goals and plans? We should. The issue is not having goals and plans, it’s our strong attachment to them. A huge unlock for me was starting to focus less on the outcome, and more on the journey to get there - the one that can be the most fulfilling, expansive or adventurous; the one that might be difficult and not at all fun at times, but will grow me in a way that is meaningful to me, and not just bring money, status and/or external approval.
When we focus on the journey more than the outcome we leave room for openness, flow and intuition and therefore greater potential for better opportunities or more innovative ideas to emerge. We allow our creative self to rear its head and drive our actions. So if something goes awry we don’t get frustrated because it delayed our plan to get a promotion, we consider which opportunities opened up for us to follow a different path to a promotion, or whether we still care about the promotion at all.
If we let go of the idea that we can predict the outcome or create a perfect plan to get there, we can be present not only to how the situation evolves but also to how we evolve.
The point is not the outcome. It’s not even the journey. It’s who we become by going through the journey.
The point is to look back, regardless of the outcome, and not want to change anything - because it made us who we are.
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