Desired outcomes feel great, but have short value spans.
“Are you outcome driven or process driven?
Desired outcomes feel great, but have short value spans.
You get the shirt, hold up the trophy, then it’s on to the next outcome.
Processes are what hold the value that contribute to layered levels of future personal resilience.”
-Ray Zingler on Twitter
I truly believe coming to understand and fall in love with the process of delayed gratification has been the biggest game changer for me in my own personal life.
As a younger person, I was admittedly impatient. I wanted X right now and I was willing to do whatever it took to get it. I was relentless when it came to my goals and desires.
Sometimes I would get X, but sometimes I wouldn’t, and looking back on it, whenever I would get it instantly there was very little value in it because I didn’t have the concept of the process to appreciate it. Got the t-shirt. Woo. Onto the next thing.
On the contrary, when I wouldn’t get X right away, it would sting. I’d be frustrated, sometimes even mad. In the moment it didn’t “feel good” but I came to learn why I didn’t get it and how valuable the pay-off of not being instantly gratified was.
This helped shift my mindset from outcome driven to process driven because I found out the value was actually not in outcomes, but in the processes that lead to outcomes.
Why?
Because the process is a far larger piece of the puzzle.
You hold up the championship trophy for 12 seconds, the buzz afterwards lasts maybe a day? Two? But the process required to hold up that trophy for 12 seconds took 12 months, meaning the actual “meat and potatoes” of the value took place in the process.
So where am I going with this?
I look at everything in my life from then lens of “increasing future resilience” meaning that the decisions I make (or don’t make) today will have direct implications on the quality of my resilience in the future.
Take off a work out every time I feel tired?
Bail out of a commitment every time I get busy?
Don’t stay cool, calm, and collected every time things don’t go my way?
Making those choices above would have direct negative implications on my future resilience whereas if I condition myself and change “not do” to “do it anyway”, the impact of those choices will have a cumulative, compounding effects on my future resilience.
Live for today, you have to, but it’s not about today. It’s about tomorrow.
