As a father it has always been important to me to emphasise to my children that I don’t care if they win or lose, all I insisted on was that they do their best. This sounds really “woke” but I think that there is a huge distinction between decisions and outcomes. Pause and take a moment to silently think about any decision that you have taken over the past few months.
Q. Did that decision have a good outcome?
A. My guess is yes! As everyone always picks one that has a good outcome, because that’s how we decide that it’s a good outcome.


I believe that if you made a good decision and it didn’t work out, then it’s still a good decision. On the other hand, if you made a bad decision and got lucky, you haven’t learned anything about good decision making. And yet we criticise people based on the outcome as opposed to criticising them based on what’s in their control, and that’s the decision. The practice is about focussing on the decisions because the outcomes are out of our control. The practice is about what’s in our control and not what the outcomes are.
When this happened what are you going to do about it, is completely different than this happened and screaming oh no, over and over again. I think that things that happen, happen, but they are out of our control except for our response towards them.


Food for thought - Do you value truth over objective reality? Are you willing to be effective or would you prefer to be right? I think if you want to be effective you will be open to feedback that teaches you how the world really works. If you need to be right, then you will isolate yourself from that and in your heart of hearts, you know you’ll never be effective.