I remember watching a calisthenics workout video a couple of years back and was inspired to start calisthenics workouts.
In case you’re wondering, Calisthenics is the type of workout where you have to use your whole body entirely, instead of weights, to get in shape. The nature of this type of training means that on average it will take a while for someone dedicated to it to see the results of their training and in the beginning because of not seeing the desired results, I found myself quitting and starting over and over again. It is only recently that I started being consistent with it.
Isn’t it true that most of us are guilty of that? ‘Giving up on our goals because we are not seeing the results at the moment.’
Don’t you ever just get impatient with what is coming your way? That it is not coming fast enough?
The society we live in has now been molded in a way that makes people want instant results. Gone are the days when we were taught to work hard, stay consistent and be patient, to reach some level of success now it seems those principles are slowly becoming obsolete.
This is why it is so hard for most of us to stick to the goals that we may have set for ourselves. That is one reason why most of us hate putting in the work.
And maybe that is the problem, we focus so much on the results that if nothing is happening by the time deadline we set for ourselves, we give up.
So what would happen if we adjusted our mind set and instead of focusing so much on the result, we turn our attention to the process?
What happens when we focus on the process? Take a look at some of the things that will change for you.
It removes all distractions
The moment you begin to focus on what you have to do in order to get to where you need to be, you will begin to stop paying attention to all the distractions diverting your attention away from your current goal.
That is how the process works. You will begin to identify what is important to you and know what is wasting your time and you will make steps to advance yourself towards your goal. You’ll achieve mastery of a new skill more quickly if you can learn to detect the things that build it up and reinforce the correct processes whether or not they happened to lead to the desired outcome in that instance.
It goes without saying that achieving anything in this technological age is not as easy as it once may have been due to everything that has been built to eat up your attention.
But success is only achieved through flawless focused effort.
You start to enjoy the work
Having your eye on the results has a way of making you hate the work you have to do to get it. That is because you are looking to the future where your results are and the fact that we can’t get them this very minute makes us unhappy with what we are doing now.
But on the other hand, when you begin to pay attention to the process and focus on building the skills that you need to use in order to get the results, you will begin to enjoy the process. You will begin to live in the present and begin to enjoy the moments that you may have not paid attention to before. Focusing on process will let you engage more deeply with the present and you will get to experience it more fully, and that will help you learn faster and experience life more completely.
This will also even lead you to start experimenting with your work. When you’re wholly focused on a specific desired result, you’re less willing to try long shots, less inclined to experiment, less open to serendipity, and less likely to stumble on an even better outcome than the one you were aiming for. But once you lock in, you learn and evolve, finding different, easier and more efficient ways to do things.
You take control
An outlook focusing on the ‘results’ is mainly an outlook based on external factors.
Once you focus on an external factor as the basis for your happiness or motivation, you will only retain part of the control that you could have. You leave the important part to someone else or something else.
But the moment you switch from external factors to internal factors you will begin to take FULL control of your progress.
This is what focusing on doing the work does. ‘Whether you give your best effort or not is entirely within your power’ and you will soon realize this.
An internal focus of control leads to empowerment, higher self-esteem, and success, all of which contribute meaningfully to life satisfaction.
Builds confidence in you
The moment you realize that whether you achieve your goal or not is entirely up to you, is the moment upon which you hand over the keys of building your self-confidence from someone else and place them into your own hands.
An approach derived on working and not complaining will make you start working on your skills in order to make them better. This will in turn build a sense of confidence in you.
The kind of confidence that is gained on the path of mastery.
You’ll worry less about the future because you’ll know that you’ll be happy regardless of the outcome of any given situation or event. You’ll become free to get out of your comfort zone, to be spontaneous and take risks. And being unattached to a specific outcome means you won’t be needy, or get upset when things don’t go as you had hoped.
You will start to appreciate the results a lot more
Results that are earned by means of using shortcuts and that are earned easily are taken for granted. I’m sure we can all think of one person who had a privileged life and always got what he/she wanted and from the outside looking in it seems like they really never made the most of what they had and took most of it for granted.
But once you take the time to really put in the work and pay attention to what you have to do to even move a step closer to your goal, you will appreciate the results a lot more.
Nothing makes you appreciate anything more than working and earning it, no matter how much we try to believe otherwise.
Without knowing how to handle failure or setbacks, we will never appreciate success when it presents itself.
Final thoughts…
The results are important as well, they do present us with something that will help us measure our effort and give us a sense of satisfaction.
But for the most part our focus is only on the results and that is what we tend to enjoy and look forward to.
But who says that is the only part you have to enjoy? You can enjoy both and learn from both.
So instead of getting frustrated and impatient with your results which will eventually lead to you giving up and complaining, why not change you approach and focus on the process and enjoy the struggle to get what you want.
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Thanks for Reading 🙂
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