• “It’s important not to be results oriented in business” (https://foreverjobless.com/ev-millionaires-math/)
• You can control inputs, you can’t control results
• Trying to/wishing you could control things you can’t control is dysfunctional and a source of great dissatisfaction
• When you walk or run, do you visualise that you’re gradually moving in space, from one end of the street to the other, or do you visualise that you’re staying still and the world is moving around you? I assume it’s the latter, since that’s how I always pictured things, though I’ve never taken a poll. It can be incredibly freeing, and good practice for training the mind to be more still, if you can imagine that all you’re doing is controlling the input: moving your legs. In turn, the world typically responds, your destination moves closer to you, but that part is actually not in your control. You can only move your legs.
• It’s the same in all aspects of business and life. We worry about how our proposal might be received. What the outcome will be. But all we have control of is moving our fingers to type the email and press Send. The rest is out of our control.
• In that sense, paradoxically there’s something incredibly freeing about having less control. Because you’re not really having less control at all: you’re just relinquishing your attempts to control things that cannot be yours to control.
• Focus on your inputs. Accept the rest.