The Process Takes Care of the Outcome

Sometimes a book can hit you square between the eyes.

Yesterday, I picked up Seth Godin’s new book, The Practice: “a road map to the journey taken by every artist, writer, maker, and entrepreneur—a powerful call to action for those who seek to make change.” When something really hits me, I find myself shaking my head and laughing in disbelief as I read passages, bunny-earring page after page of things that I want to come back to, and underlining sentences, starring paragraphs, and writing ideas down in the margins.

I’m 40 pages in and all but three pages are marked up.

Like I said, sometimes you read a book at exactly the right time.

Embrace the Process

Early on Godin states that “[w]e live in an outcome-focused culture.” I shook my head and laughed in disbelief as I read the whole section on The Process and the Outcome.

Embrace the process. This has been a mantra of mine for a long time when it comes to training. Sometimes, though, theory is a lot easier than action.

The past two weeks of training—swimming, biking, running, lifting—haven’t been a lot of fun. It’s not only been hard to get motivated to get the workouts in, but the workouts have just felt really hard while doing them. This was a stark contrast to how workouts were feeling when I first started training in earnest back in September. As I was finding my groove again, the workouts just flowed and I was excited to get out the door. I was seeing progress on an almost daily basis and it was fun to experience the changes happening.

Photo by Julie Anne Photography

But, then something changed.

And, much to my frustration, I couldn’t figure out what it was. I was still going through the motions but something that I truly love, was feeling like a drag.

And then that book hits you square between the eyes.

As I was reading this morning, the light bulbs were going off: “Lost in this obsession with outcome is the truth that outcomes are the results of process. Good processes, repeated over time, lead to good outcomes more often than lazy processes do. Focusing solely on outcomes forces us to make choices that are banal, short-term, or selfish. It takes our focus away from the journey and encourages us to give up too early.”

I had lost sight of the process. My mantra—Embrace the process—had been abandoned for results. Results that, really, I have no control over.

Stay In Your Lane

And it all stemmed from not staying in my lane.

In moving down to Florida, I’ve been lucky to join a masters swim team. I loved it from the beginning because I was able to jump in, get my ass kicked pretty darn good, and walk out smiling knowing that, in time, I’d be able to keep up during the practices. The outcomes weren’t the focus—I knew that to get there I simply had to sit in the process of showing up day after day after day. I had to focus on building up the little things of swimming—the technical components—while also building up my endurance.

And slowly but surely, it started to pay off.

Rather than getting my ass kicked on a daily basis, I was starting to keep up more and more. I was pushing paces that I hadn’t touched in over a year. People were talking to me and asking me for tips. I was getting my swimming mojo back and it all happened because I just kept engaging in the journey.

But then I started focusing on the lane next to me. And the lane two or three away from me.

“How fast are they swimming?”

“Why can’t I keep up?”

“I’ll let them set the pace and just follow along.”

I stopped embracing the process and started obsessing about the outcome. As Godin said, I was, indeed, making choices that we “banal, short-term, [and] selfish.” And, as he promised, because I had lost focus on the journey, I found myself “giv[ing] up too early.”

Rather than walking out of practice with a smile from a nice ass kicking, I was beating myself up on the drive home.

Instead of getting amped up for a swim practice, I was anxious about who was going to be there.

In lieu of building another workout into my day, I was justifying why it was okay to skip a run or a strength session simply because I was feeling mentally beat up.

Photo by Julie Anne Photography

By losing sight of the process…the journey…The Practice…I was searching for an outcome. I was expecting a result. And when we obsess over outcomes and expect results, we not only stop attending to the things that we can control—the process—but we may start stripping away at our dream that got us going on the goal-chasing process to begin with. Godin warns us, “[t]he search for a guarantee is endless, fruitless, and the end of possibility, not the beginning.”

Identify Who You Are

“Identity fuels action, and action creates habits, and habits are part of the practice, and a practice is the single best way to get to where you seek to go,” Godin tell us. And, when it comes to action, Godin says, “[t]he only choice we have is to begin. And the only place to begin is where we are. Simply begin. But Begin. Imogen Roy helps us understand that effective goals aren’t based on the end result: they are commitments to the process. That commitment is completely under your control, even if the end result can’t be.”

So, it’s time to get back in my lane and simply embrace the process.

Who am I?

Photo by Julie Anne Photography

I’m a swimmer trying to get better. I’ve made my start. I’m taking action. And I’m building the habits of the practice to get to where I want to go. What that “better” looks like, is out of my control. But, I will control how I regularly show up.

So, today, forget about the outcome and start by identifying who you are and who you want to be. Then, simply begin. Do the work and embrace in the process. There are no guarantees of what it will be, but the process will inevitably lead to a future outcome. And maybe, just maybe, it will be “where you seek to go.”