Fall In Love With The Process, Not The Results

When you are working on any endeavor, fall in love with the process, not the results that you want.

People that do well, people that succeed, people that are high achievers, and do it consistently well, do that I think because they have found a way to make the journey enjoyable.

Many of the things we would like to change in our lives are going to be a long ride. If it is a long ride toward the thing that you want, and you don’t enjoy the ride, you will quit. Change needs to be as enjoyable as you can make it, so try to find a process that you can fall in love with, find what works for you.

Perhaps you are trying to learn a new language and a friend shares this book they used to achieve their results of learning a language by reading this book. That is all well and good, but you would rather listen to a podcast or use an online tutorial program like DuoLingo to learn a language. You prefer using the podcast to listen to during your commute and practice online when you get home; the idea of studying a language from a book doesn’t work for you. If presented with only the book option, chances are you may not get very far in your endeavor to learn that language. That works for them, but you know what works for you.

If you decide you want to get into shape a friend may recommend going to the gym but you know you hate the gym; you know you prefer working out at home using an exercise routine that works for you. If forced into going to the gym, how long do you think you could sustain this unenjoyable activity as you work toward your results?

This is what I mean; find the method that works for you on your journey. Lots of people have a great idea of how you should do something, and if you head out toward your goal with this acquiescence, surrendering to their ideas, they will give you an off-the-shelf process that doesn’t fit you, then you will struggle to reach the result. And you won’t realize the problem isn’t that the result is unattainable, and that you should not have set that goal, but that you are just not enjoying the ride!

So, create your own process. If you are healing from something, recovering from something emotionally, recovering from some PTSD scenario and you know that you heal better by being on your own, reading a book, going for a walk in the woods, sitting by an open fire, walking the dog, gardening - then do that instead of going to therapy or counseling. Others may think you need to go to counseling because that worked for them, but it may not work for you. 

And if you do it and it doesn’t work for you, you will start to struggle not knowing that your struggle is not with the outcome you desire, but you just hate the process.

Find a process toward what you want to change, toward what you are designing, that you can love and enjoy and appreciate. If you don’t love the process then there is a strong chance that you will quit and get off the ride. And it wasn’t that you didn’t believe in the outcome, you just weren’t having any fun. Make the process as fun as you can.

Life and personal growth I think should be growth driven rather than results driven. I think this is a problem with our education system that needs addressing that it is so results driven through one size fits all examination results, rather than personal growth driven, rather than aware of the various ways in which kids grow and the various forms of intelligence they exhibit. 

Learn to love the process and you will set yourself up for a sustained path of improvement and growth toward achieving this goal and all the others to follow. Best to you!