Ordinary People Focus on the Outcome. Extraordinary People Focus On
the Process
In his autobiography, Bryan
Cranston (Walter White of the renowned Breaking Bad) described the
lesson he learned that helped him go from an average actor to an extraordinary
one. Here’s what he wrote:
“Early in my career, I
was always hustling. Doing commercials, guest-starring, auditioning like crazy.
I was making a decent living…but I felt I was stuck in junior varsity. I
wondered if I had plateaued. Then, Breck Costin [his mentor] suggested I focus on process rather than outcome.
I wasn’t going to the
audition to get anything: a
job or money or validation. I wasn’t going to compete.
I was going to give something.
I wasn’t there to get a job. I was there to do a job. I was there to give a performance. If I attached
to the outcome, I was setting myself up to expect, and thus to fail. My job was
to be compelling. Take come chances. Enjoy the process.”
Cranston went on to say after he
made this mindset shift, he felt much more relaxed and free. There was no
longer any pressure, because the outcome was irrelevant. “Once I made the
switch, I had power in any room I walked into,” he wrote. “Which
meant I could relax. I was free.”
Soon after this shift, Cranston was
offered a role in the wildly popular Malcolm in the Middle, for
which he was nominated for 3 Emmy awards. He is now one of the most respected
and well-known actors in the world.
What
would it do for you if you could walk into any room and feel relaxed and free?
How would
it feel to have power in any situation you walked into?
What
would happen if you could live your life with no pressure, free to achieve any
goal you wanted?
Ordinary people focus on the
outcome. But extraordinary people focus on the process. This is how they
achieve such enormous goals.
Pressure
is Imagined
Pressure isn’t real — it’s just the stress
you put on yourself in your head. Pressure is the result of limitations we put
on ourselves to produce outcomes we don’t control. When we focus on the
outcome, we begin to expect things out of our control, which sets us up for failure.
Here’s a personal example.
Back when I used to work as a
telemarketer, I was under extreme stress every day. I was making 250+ calls a
day to random strangers (most of whom had already told me “No, I don’t want
to buy your products, stop calling
me.”). My boss was constantly breathing down my neck, demanding to
know why I hadn’t made more sales. He constantly implied he was about to fire
me.
After months of this, I began to
believe a false reality: that I could makepeople buy something. If
only I said the right thing, in the right way, at the right time. At least,
that’s what my boss claimed.
I wasn’t until nearly 2 years later
I finally quit that awful job and left my manipulative boss that I realized: “That’s
not true. I can’t make anyone
do anything.” All that pressure I had been putting on myself was imagined.
I had made it all up in some sick effort to “motivate” myself.
You don’t
need to pressure yourself to compete, to win, to come out on top.
Because the truth is, you don’t
control the outcome. You don’t control anything — except yourself. The
only parts you truly have control over are your attitude, your mindset, and your actions.
The rest is out of your control.
There’s a quote I heard in my many
years of therapy and counseling:
“My serenity is
inversely proportional to my expectations. The higher my expectations of other
people are, the lower is my serenity.”
The higher your expectations — for your job, the
people around you, the outcome — the lower your
serenity. The more you expect things to happen
in ways you don’t control, the more stress and pressure you’ll experience.
This is a
hard lesson. I don’t expect many
people to get it right away. I’ve heard that phrase for years and still have a
hard time with it.
That’s OK. Fundamental mindset
shifts like this take time. If it doesn’t make sense now, don’t worry about. If
there’s one thing I encourage you to consider: pressure is imagined. You don’t
control the outcome, so don’t even try. Instead, focus on what you can control:
yourself, your attitude, and your actions.
Once you understand pressure is
imagined, nothing can phase you on your path to mastery. You can achieve
enormous goals with simple ease.
“Ignore what other
people are doing. Ignore what’s going on around you. There is no competition.
There is no objective benchmark to hit. There is simply the best you can do — that’s all that matters.” -Ryan Holiday
https://theascent.pub/ordinary-people-focus-on-the-outcome-extraordinary-people-focus-on-the-process-6d9a0888df01
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