Process > Outcome

Your progress is holding you back.

You’re getting the outcome you want at the expense of becoming the person you’re supposed to be. And because the outcome looks good, you have very little reason to question how you got there.

You finish the project by taking over everyone else’s work. The deadline gets met, but you reinforce the belief that you have to do everything yourself.

You get promoted because you produce results. But you still can’t take feedback or handle conflict.

Now you have more authority and the same limitations and fewer people willing to point them out!

Winning can reinforce the very things that will eventually cost you over a long enough time horizon.

Everyone is focused on winning the game: getting the promotion, making the money, raising successful kids.

But the real goal is to develop character traits that carry across a series of games. Discipline. Honesty. Patience. Qualities you can bring to your work, your marriage, and your parenting.

The process is you. The goal is you.

This is the number one issue I see with high performers. They accomplish the goals they set out to accomplish. They get the job, the money, the relationship. They have the life on paper. It’s picture perfect, but they don’t feel right.

Their life does not align with their inner state. They don’t feel like the kind of person who should have the things they have. They’ve been so focused on getting there that their eagerness, ambition, and ego have gotten the best of them.

They’ve gotten the outcome at the expense of becoming.

Here are two ways to bring your attention back to the process.

1. TRUST THE PROCESS.

Pick the character traits you want to develop. Name what kind of company you want to run, what kind of family you want to create. Define what that would look like in practice, and hold that standard regardless of the outcome.

Be a principled person. Know and articulate your standard before it gets pressure tested, because when the outcome you want is on the line, every part of you will want to compromise.

No outcome is worth compromising who you’ve committed to becoming.

2. Let things take longer so you can actually get better.

Instead of taking over a project, practice coaching someone through it. You need opportunities to develop the qualities you say you want. If you keep bypassing them to secure the immediate result, when exactly are you going to develop them?