How You Succeed Is Just As Important As The Success Itself
We can easily fixate on the outcomes, but the process we get to these outcomes is often underestimated. The process is the engine that helps us achieve grand audacious things. The outcomes is just the score.
Yes, goals are important and outcomes matter. Positive outcomes are validation for the effort you put in. However it isn’t what shapes or makes you. They are just simply a measure at a point in time.
Most things in life aren’t a linear line up to the top right. It is an up and down oscillation of experiences both good and bad. What we experience, learn, reflect and then act on is important. This process repeats, and this is what collectively makes up our life.
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words.
Watch your words, they become your actions.
Watch your actions, they become your habits.
Watch your habits, they become your character.
Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”— Lao Tzu
Imagine you win lotto. Does it validate your decision to buy the lotto ticket as the “right” thing to do?
If you trained your heart out for a marathon but due to an unforeseen injury you didn’t finish, did you fail?
Life isn’t always a simple matter of “winning”, “losing”. There may be specific things, actions or events which may be defined as such, but the experiences we go through in any given timeframe consists of nuances that don’t match up to these absolutes. That’s why the process you achieve things matter.
Then the way you win and succeed matters. The way you strive every day matters. If the process was wrong and you win, you have lost an opportunity to genuinely lay longterm foundations for yourself and your character. If the process was right and you lose, you may have lost for now but long-term you are building on strong foundations.
Some personal reflections about some things I believe are the right way to approach things:
- There is no substitute for hard work. All things great are developed from focus over a protracted period of time. Work ethic, focus and consistency creates greatness over the long-term.
- Fight the “Just this once” mentality. Don’t take shortcuts for things you genuinely care about.
- Build firm foundations. Understand important things thoroughly, the what, the how as well as the why. The onus is on you. Whatever the peer pressure or ideas of conformity, great foundations is built upon firm character.
- How we act in hard times show our character. Excuses or justifications are for retrospective evaluation, not for the moment of action. Act the best we can in the moments given to us.
- There is no “right” answer. There are logically sound answers. There are helpful hints from experience. But remember that most difficult situations are unique. Tread carefully away from the absolute and be wary of accepting this as the arbiter of decision making. Use experience from the past and your logic to help you, but not as a crutch.
- Others see the score, but you grow from the process. Others may see achievements and applaud, but the thing which moves you forward isn’t applause but the genuine, incremental hard won efforts over time.
- When you go, go with all your heart. Do things for a purpose. Whether it be mundane goals or grand visions, know what you want and approach it with the respect and dedication that it deserves.
Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.
- Heraclitus of Ephesus
