Why the outcomes don’t matter
There is an old fable about this Mexican Fisherman.
This fisherman lives in a small village, and during the day, he takes his small boat out on the lake and goes fishing, he then takes the fish back to the village, selling it for the other things he needs.
They tell stories in the village, they dance and play music and share cerbeza (beer)
He goes home to his wife and kids, and gets to spend his nights with his family. Then he wakes up, sleeps in a bit, spends time with his family.
This is the cylce of his life almost every single day.
Then one day, he comes across this businessman, who asks the fisherman what he does.
When the fisherman explains, the businessman tells him how he could expand, how he could take out a loan to build a business of several boats, sell them in the US, and after 20-30 years, sell the company for millions of dollars.
The fisherman then asks him, “and then what?” To which the business man replies, “well then you could wake up late, spend time with your family, go fishing and then drink Cerbeza and dance with your friends in the village.
The dream was already his reality, the reason he would be working so hard was to get the life he already had.
The main lesson of the story was to understand why we do the things that we do and to highlight perspective.
But there’s another lesson that I learned. What if you designed your life so that outcomes didn’t matter, so that the journey, the process was what you looked forward to every day.
As a life designer, you live by choice, not by default, and if you organize yourself in a manner to where you optimize for the right outcomes, but also a process that you love, then the outcomes matter less and less.
Here are 4 ways to make the outcomes matter less
1 - Design your dream day
If you can build a day that you find meaningful and fulfilling every day, that most days you can get a sense of joy and happiness as a by-product of meaning, you win. Imagine waking up every day to a life you can’t wait to live, so write down your dream day, what you would be doing. Not a vacation day, but a typical one, and think about what’s most important, then compare it with your current typical day.
2 - Live every day with intentionality
This is the shift from I have to, to I get to. If you have something you have to do, and you simply cannot view it as an ‘I get to’ opportunity, try and eliminate as many of those as possible, and the ones that you can’t eliminate, always remember the reason why you have to do them, always bring it back to intentionality.
3 - Make the goal simple, just look to get better and do it with great people
It doesn’t have to be a complicated ten page goal. My goal is this, I want to constantly become the best version of myself, and I want to do it with amazing people. That’s really it, because I know that as a by-product, I will help inspire people, I’ll create value for people, I’ll be able to do more of what I love, in good health, lots of knowledge, and incredible relationships.
4 - Follow advice from people whose lives you respect, both the good and the bad
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, their own perspective. That does not make it factual, or the truth, and you should not allow anyone’s opinion to control your life, or take it as the truth. The way I view it, I listen to all, to better understand the world, and to learn more about the people in it, but when it comes to advice that I apply, I only take from the people that I respect (in the admiration definition of the world). They do things or lead lives that I admire and would like myself, and I’m also willing to make similar sacrifices to what they did.
