What happens when you are attached to an outcome?
It turns out, a lot. Being attached to an outcome can make your life quite hard, unnecessarily so.
I love graphs. A great graph will take a really complicated idea and make it appear simple. Seth Godin drew in his book Linchpin a great graph on the differences between a whiner, a fundamentalist zealot, a bureaucrat, and a linchpin. It turns out that the difference operates on a sliding scale.
A linchpin, he defines as the employee who makes the organization go. They hold everything together. They also make change happen, are creative, and inspire others. The linchpin is irreplaceable.
Here the X-axis shows someone’s level of engagement from Passive to Passionate.
The Y-axis shows someone’s level of understanding of a situation from Attached to Discernment.
The journey from passive to passionate is easy to understand. Either you really care(are passionate) about a thing, or you really don’t care(are passive).\
The process from attachment to discernment is a little harder to understand for folks so let’s quickly iron this out.
Discernment is defined as the ability to judge well. A person with a high level of discernment can look at the world without a fixed mindset. They can look at situations and say “Isn’t that interesting.” They can look at being cut off in traffic and think “I wonder what that person is going through today?” over “What a jerk.” The person with discernment knows that the person may well be a jerk, but we’ll never know. The offender could also be coming home from a funeral, driving to the hospital, or a list of other things that could happen. “Isn’t that interesting?”
The person who is attached to an idea has a much harder time. “That jerk cut me off!” “This loser at the post office took 17 minutes with the postman. 17 minutes!” “I can’t lose weight because I’ve always been overweight. My family too.”
These people are attached to an idea.
“…(People don’t) care about your defense. (They) care about working with someone who can accurately see what was, what is, and where things are heading. When you see a bump ahead, do you say, ‘Ohmy god we’re doomed!’ or do you say ‘Isn’t that interesting?’”
If you can say the latter, life gets a lot easier.
It is a lot easier to lose weight when you aren’t shaming yourself for eating Chic-fil-A.
It is a lot easier to show up at the gym when it’s fun and not a punishment for something else.
It’s a lot easier to PR your clean and jerk or your snatch when you aren’t attached to a number you HAVE to hit today.
Attachment to what “should” be can make you a fundamentalist zealot or a whiner. These are cyclical states that only pull you further and further down.
Being able to talk to someone about these cycles, setting small goals to break them, and having someone for accountability purposes can go such a long way.
If you’d like to help we are here for you.
We even help for free. We have a process called a No Sweat Intro where we sit with you and ask questions like…
“How are you feeling today?”
“What goals do you have for yourself in life?”
“Here’s how we can help…”
If you want help, schedule a free No Sweat Intro and we will take time to help you find out where you are, what goals you have, and a plan to get there. We have a body composition scanner where we can set a baseline. It’s all downhill from there.
We even help do these for free because we care.
Schedule your free No Sweat Intro and we will take time to help you find out where you are, what goals you have, and a plan to get there.
If you are already a member schedule your Quarterly Review Session so we can reevaluate your goals and where you are.
The help continues. It is our way to appreciate you for being you. It’s our way to appreciate you being an amazing human who matters in this community.
Keep being amazing.
Go get ‘em.