Drawing Emotions from the Process and not the Results

When I was a kid there was one day that I always dreaded. It was the day when the results of the annual exams would be announced. Usually, since we had exams right before the summer break, the results would be announced at the beginning of the holidays and would be followed by a two month summer vacation. Although, I would be very happy that I had two months of freedom to look forward to, the results were something I dreaded mainly due to two reasons. Firstly, the results would set the tone for how the holidays would turn out. If I had done well, my parents would be happy and cheerful and would tell all my cousins, relatives and all their friends how well I had performed and I would receive a word of praise and appreciation from each of them when I met them during the course of the holidays. I would therefore look forward to meeting all of them as every time someone asked me about my results and found out that I had done well, they would give me props and each time that happened, I would get a spike of positive emotion. However, if I had done badly, it would be the complete opposite. My parents would be sour, and I would dread meeting everyone during the summer as each of them would have words of disapproval for me and each time I heard them it would make me feel bad about myself. But recently, a thought sprang up in my mind. Although almost everyone would tell me I should try harder or concentrate more and apply myself etc. nobody asked me or showed any interest in exactly how it is that I was going about studying during the course of the year.

Nobody would ask me if I would study every day or whether I would study mostly in the weekends or whether I would dedicate specific days for specific subjects or study multiple subjects every day or whether I study in the morning or in the evenings or any other details the process I was using to study and prepare for my exams. They also never enquired about what methods I was using to study and whether I was trying to understand the concepts or memorize them or using any other techniques to ensure I learn effectively. What I recall is that even my teachers did not really delve very deeply into this, except a few tips here and there and general exhortations to “study harder” or “concentrate harder”. We were all judged by the “results” of the examinations and everything including our self-worth as kids was tied largely to our results. Hence, unconsciously the message that was being hammered into our heads was “results are everything” so make sure you get good results. Often times, this led to us to resorting to small time cheating in order to ensure that we got the results that would keep people off our backs and ensure we got all those good emotions. Unconsciously we were all being hypnotized into a results oriented trance.

Recently, I read something that really struck me with the profoundness of its simplicity. “Results are nothing but the RESULTS of a PROCESS.” The very word result denotes that it is something that occurs as a consequence of a slew of other things or in other words the consequence of a process of events or actions. But somehow we tend to never look at it this way. We are all hyper focused on the results and tend to beat ourselves up when we do not get the results that we desire and we draw all our emotions from the nature of the results that we get. If we get the desired result, we feel happy worthy and proud and if we do not, we are down and consider ourselves to be defective in some way or the other.

The other big issue with being so results focused is that if the results are the be all and end all of whatever it is that you are doing or if results are the only metric by which you judge yourself, you have to wait till you get the results that you desire to feel good about yourself. It is only when you finally achieve the desired result that you can feel validated and good about whatever it was that you were doing. So if you are studying for an exam and you want to get an A+ grade, you are going to have to study for months or for a year, then give your exams and wait for the results and when you get the results, if that result matches what you had in mind only then do you feel good. But during the entire period of time preceding the exam and getting the results, when you are putting in the effort, it is one big mental struggle, in the hope that you will get to feel good if you manage to get the result you are hoping for at the end.

Now, I am sure all this sounds so obvious that you might even be irritated at me for breaking this down in such detail. At some point while reading the last paragraph I am sure you were frustrated at me for harping on about something that seems natural and that we all do. However, if we really do think about it and realize that results are indeed just the result of a process, should we not be concentrating all our attention and energy on the process? I mean is it not by tinkering with and focusing on the process that we can hope to alter an outcome or achieve a particular result? I definitely think we should, but the unfortunate reality is that most of the time we don’t because we have all been conditioned to be in a results oriented trance.

At this point, I would like to clarify that I am not going to exhort you guys with the all too popular cliche that we must do things just for the joy of doing them and forget about the results or the adage “Concentrate on the process and don’t care about the results”. Though these lines do carry sound advice, in a way are they are often misleading and are misinterpreted. They are misleading because they seem to allude to a mindset of just doing what you need to do and “not caring about the results”. Whenever we read something like that, the first thought that pops up into our mind is that well, we do care about the result, and that the result is very important to us and hence we tend to dismiss these kind of platitudes as unhelpful idealistic fluff. However, what I am getting at here is that the more we care about the result, the more we should concentrate on and care about the process because the only way to be able to influence the results we get are by focusing on the processes that will ultimately produce the results that we desire so much. Let us now look at how emotions impact this concept.

Emotions are very powerful. Most of the decisions we make and the things we do in our day to day life are determined by how we feel. If there is one thing that we can all agree on about human behaviour, it is that if something feels good and gives us pleasurable emotions, we tend to do more of it and we look forward to doing it. This includes things like browsing social media, gorging on pastries and anything else that gives us a spike of positive emotions. If we are in a results oriented trance, as I mentioned earlier, we feel good only when we hit our target or when we receive praise or adoration from others for producing some good result. But in the case of most things that are worth accomplishing, there is a time lag between when we are putting in the effort or in other words following the process and when we ultimately see the results. Letting ourselves experience good emotions only when we achieve the desired result is a recipe for failure in most cases simply because it is too far away and you do not give yourself props or feel good while you are treading along that long road to your desired destination. Furthermore, sometimes despite us having done everything in our power, we do not get the result we desire or achieve the goal we set out to achieve. This might be because of bad luck, someone else’s mistake or countless other things that might intervene. Life truly is unpredictable.

When we are faced with these scenarios, if we are drawing our emotions and our self-worth only from the nature of the result, we get disheartened and quit. We end up feeling that all the effort that we put in was to no avail as the end result we were hoping for did not materialise. Sometimes we end up beating ourselves up and feeling that we lack something inherent which is needed to succeed. By drawing these kinds of conclusions due to us being entirely results oriented, we discount all the effort we put in to following the process and often times conclude that there is no point continuing. Whereas we might have succeeded if we just took it in our stride, examined the process that we followed and determined if it needed any tweaking and then just persevered for longer. But in order to do so we have to get out of the results oriented trance and get into a mode of being process oriented. Instead of putting all our emphasis and drawing conclusions solely from the result, we need to place all the emphasis on the process and give ourselves props and celebrate and cherish each time we take steps to follow the process.

Going back to the scenario of children and exams, how about instead of showering praise or expressing disapproval at the end based on the nature of the results they score at an exam, we started rewarding them with praise and approval each time they spent time studying. Every time they study, they are increasing their chances of a good result, and if every time they study they get rewarded with positive emotions, they start to associate each study session (each time they follow the process) with positive feelings and instead of being conditioned to be entirely results focused they begin to understand that it is the process that is more important. Similarly when we set goals for ourselves as adults, instead of letting ourselves feel good only when we hit our target of losing X kilos in X number of days, how about we start focusing on feeling good about ourselves and drawing positive emotions each time we go to the gym or each meal where we do not eat any junk food. Then the reward or the good feelings do not come at the end when you measure whether you achieved your goal, they come every time you exercise or every meal you have where you stay away from junk food. In this way, even if you have not hit your goal of losing X number of kilograms in X number of days, you are feeling so good from all the little victories you have had following the process that you will most likely continue and then end up getting the result you desired down the road anyway.

I feel our early conditioning as kids, the movies, media and everything that we consume puts us in a results oriented trance. In movies, we are conditioned to feel good when the protagonist achieves a heroic goal, in the news it is an athlete’s victory in the Olympics or a team winning a competition that is celebrated so we are reinforced with the message again and again that it is the end results alone that are worthy of being celebrated and focused on. What we do not see or pay attention to is the hundreds and thousands of private victories that each of these people or teams that achieve great things win every day. Every day that an athlete wakes up early and goes to practise is a victory. It is not heroic and nobody notices it, but without that small unnoticed victory that is achieved day in and day out for years there would not have been that momentous public victory that the entire world recognizes and showers praise on the athlete for.

Hence, I think if we want to succeed at things that are hard and take a lot of time and really master something, it is absolutely imperative that we break out of this results oriented trance and put ourselves in a process oriented trance. It would be far more conducive to achieve long term results if we stop drawing all our emotions from the end result and train ourselves to draw our positive emotions from the process. This requires a lot of conscious effort as we are all very effectively conditioned to judge only the results and nothing else. But the inherent truth is that “Results are just the result of a process.” Hence, it would be far wiser to place all our attention on the process as it is the only way to influence results anyway.