About Results — 12 Ideas

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Results — The use­ful­ness or valid­i­ty of an action is always deter­mined by the result. If it ain’t work­ing, doing more of it isn’t going to work either.

The use­ful­ness or valid­i­ty of an action is always deter­mined by the result. If it ain’t work­ing, doing more of it isn’t going to work either. If you’re ham­mer­ing on some issue and no one else is inter­est­ed, maybe you need to let the thing go. If you’re ignor­ing some­thing and hop­ing it will go away, and it isn’t, maybe you have to deal with it. If you find your­self say­ing, “It always turns out like that,” maybe you need to try anoth­er approach.

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I’ve writ­ten count­less posts and arti­cles about what I call the “Util­i­ty Test.” What I mean is, the only deter­mi­na­tion of the val­ue of an action (or a thought, for that mat­ter) is, “Does it work?”

In oth­er words, does what I am think­ing or doing get me the results I say I want?

This test seems per­fect­ly log­i­cal, until you apply it to one of your sacred cow beliefs or actions. Then, things get interesting. 

Let me tell you a cou­ple of stories.

I sub­scribe to sev­er­al Flickr feeds, and one per­son issued a pho­to titled “I’d rather be dead than con­form.” What’s inter­est­ing about her is how often she express­es this sen­ti­ment. It seems to arise from her dis­like of either neg­a­tive assess­ments of, or sex­u­al com­ments about, some of her pho­tos, notably the nude ones.

She starts by tough­ing it out and argu­ing ‘artis­tic free­dom,’ but then ends up angry, sad, or annoyed.

And, her pho­tos are great.

So, it begs the ques­tion, “What does she want?”

Obvi­ous­ly, she wants an ide­al world where all she receives are com­ple­ments on her excel­lent pho­tos, no sleaze­ball remarks, and no one, no one, ques­tion­ing her motives or intent. She wants this, real­ly badly. 

But the cos­mos is kind, and always pro­vides what we fear, just to help us learn. So, quite reg­u­lar­ly, she upsets her­self that peo­ple are not giv­ing her what she wants. Her want is trumped by the behav­iour of oth­ers — some­thing always out of our control.

It seems to me that she has two real actions that would allow her to “win.” She could:

• 1) get over offend­ing her­self when peo­ple com­ment or crit­i­cize, or
• 2) stop post­ing nude pho­tos of herself.

Her option of choice, demand­ing that oth­ers do what she wants them to, is mag­i­cal, wish­ful thinking.

To say it again, the only thing that matters is the result.

Peo­ple are typ­i­cal­ly stuck in one-note think­ing and act­ing. Often the cho­sen thought path and action can be traced back to child­hood — either some­thing the per­son learned from a par­ent, and/or a behav­iour cre­at­ed in response to a stres­sor. In either case, the thought or response comes from way, way back — orig­i­nates in the mind of a child. Or a teen. 

And we know how smart kids and teens are.

Now, admittedly, some of that stuff might have actually worked.
In childhood.

I remem­ber one client — her dad was also a client. She men­tioned how well “guilt­ing him” worked — he was often over­seas, and when he got home, she bat­ted her baby blues, and whined about how hard done by she was.

He apol­o­gized, then gave her stuff, and also let her off the hook for all of the “Just wait until your father gets home!” threats mom had delivered.

At 35… at 40… old­er… she manip­u­lat­ed her dad — bat, bat, bat, and out would come dad’s chequebook. 

With the men in her life, not so much. They’d ini­tial­ly give in, only to dis­cov­er that what she want­ed from them was end­less sup­port, encour­age­ment, and a gold plat­ed pass to do what­ev­er she want­ed. So, they’d leave after a few months. She blamed it all on her dad.

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The results are all that matter. I don’t waste time analyzing why something isn’t working.

In the above illus­tra­tions, I trust you can see that the rea­son their behav­iour was get­ting them lousy results doesn’t mat­ter. In both cas­es, the peo­ple want­ed oth­ers to change (to sup­port them, no mat­ter what,) and were dev­as­tat­ed that they couldn’t get oth­ers to co-operate.

I refuse to move off of one of my favourite mantras:

If it ain’t work­ing, doing more of it
isn’t going to work either.

Things that do not work… wait for it… do not work.

What to do? Try anoth­er behav­iour. And anoth­er, and anoth­er, until your results approx­i­mate what you say you want.

A framing goal is essential. 

In the photographer’s case, the only sen­si­ble goal is: “I will post my pho­tos and learn from the crit­i­cisms of the pho­tos, while delet­ing and ignor­ing the brain-dead com­ments.” In the case of the client, it’s, “I will ask for what I want with­out manip­u­la­tion, and with­out expec­ta­tion that oth­ers will always go along with me.” Or some­thing similar.

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If you’re ham­mer­ing on some issue and no one else is inter­est­ed, maybe you need to let the thing go.

I remem­ber one woman who end­ed her mar­riage because her hus­band refused to admit that always wip­ing up water stains from a stain­less steel sink was essen­tial for har­mo­ny and world peace. No, real­ly. He for­got to wipe out the sink, and she came to ther­a­py, and end­ed the mar­riage. Exam­ples like this abound.

Clients pro­vid­ed lists of how they saw the world fail­ing them, and end­less­ly went on and on about their take on things.

• I’d watch their partner’s eyes glaze over, and they didn’t even notice.
• They expect­ed oth­ers to change, all the while say­ing, “I need you to agree that I am right,” and they got angry and indig­nant­ly refused when their part­ner asked them to change.
• It was dif­fi­cult for them to see that how they saw the world was exact­ly and specif­i­cal­ly the way they saw it… and oth­ers saw things dif­fer­ent­ly.

The way out is to learn to dialogue with others, and, with curiosity, to get to know more about the other person’s perspective.

If you’re ignor­ing some­thing and hop­ing it will go away, and it isn’t, maybe you have to deal with it.

Many peo­ple are deeply in denial. If you men­tion one of their stick­ing-points, they either laugh and change the sub­ject, or won’t dis­cuss it at all. Even when a loved one pro­vides feed­back that some­thing they are doing is annoy­ing, or not work­ing, or inef­fec­tive, and they refuse to exam­ine it.

Ignoring problems and dilemmas, typically by providing endless plausible justifications, is a waste of everyone’s time.

I had tons of clients who ignored their odd behav­iours and phys­i­cal symp­toms, and even­tu­al­ly made them­selves sick. It might be back pain, or heart dis­ease, or can­cer. My sense is that the stuff being ignored wants “out”—wants to be tak­en seri­ous­ly, and the only way the body has to express itself is through phys­i­cal symptoms. 

If you won’t pay atten­tion to a twinge, per­haps a charley-horse will get the mes­sage across.

The only way past what isn’t work­ing is shin­ing a light on the belief / action pat­tern, with­out flinch­ing, turn­ing away, or repress­ing any of it.

If you find your­self say­ing, “It always turns out like that,” maybe you need to try anoth­er approach.

And we repeat, “It always turns out that way” because you end­less­ly set the same thing in motion. The com­mon denom­i­na­tor of all of your issues with all of those peo­ple is… you!

Many peo­ple try chang­ing part­ners, jobs, sit­u­a­tions, and get the same thing. For exam­ple, they think that if they change part­ners often enough, they’ll final­ly find their “soul mate,” which is short­hand for,

“Some moron who will put up with my crap.”

End­less­ly search­ing for the per­fect some­one who will com­pen­sate for the things about you that you are ignor­ing, or the things that aren’t work­ing, is a great way to waste your life.

We pro­pose relent­less self-exam­i­na­tion and self know­ing, cou­pled with a will­ing­ness to be end­less­ly flex­i­ble with your thoughts, beliefs, and actions.

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