When you do something with an expectation of a certain result, two things can happen:
- It meets or exceeds your expectation and you feel positive emotions
- It doesn’t meet your expectations and you feel negative emotions
This is not an efficient way of doing things. Sometimes, you can do something perfect and still get bad results because nothing in life is certain. If you let the results dictate how you feel, you will both let chance ruin your mood and wrongly attribute the negative emotions to the action.
The more effective way of doing things is to focus on the action – whether or not you did it as a mark of success. If you did the action, then you should feel good about it regardless of the result.
This will reduce anxiety, make you more productive, and improve your mood for longer periods of time.
There is one caveat to this – evaluation of actions
If you always do the same action and it leads to the same results, then it is time to evaluate why. Because the point of focusing on the action is to be able to learn quicker and converge to actions that have higher chance of success in whatever you are trying to do. If you don’t give yourself some time to evaluate your actions, why you did it and why it led to that result, then you will repeat the same mistakes.
The good news is that most people in modern society evaluate too much and do too little. So chances are, that you need to calibrate your compass to more action, less thinking.
Examples of this in process:
If you like someone, the action could be to go and talk to them and invite them for coffee. If you care about the result, you will psyche yourself out and end up not doing it all, all but guaranteeing you will not go on a date with them. Or if you do end up doing it and getting rejected, you will associate negative feelings to that action and be less likely to ask out someone else in the future. This is silly because there are so many reasons someone could reject you that are outside your control, that there is no reason to feel bad about it. Instead, feel good that you had the confidence to take action and put yourself out there.
However, if you get to a point where you feel good taking action and asking someone out, but have consistently poor results then what is normal, then it is time to evaluate on why. If you cannot figure it out by yourself, then you have to ask friends who you trust and are good at whatever it is you are trying to do, or even better, get a coach. Yes, it costs money, but it will fast forward your progress. It is hard to see our own flaws sometimes, and friends can be too nice to tell you the truth so a coach will give you feedback that you may not want to initially hear but will be good for you. Even in business, most entrepreneurs have mentors to guide them to avoid common mistakes.
