Detach from outcomes

When you’re writing…
When you’re creating art…
When you’re brainstorming…

REMEMBER THREE WORDS: detach from outcomes.

For five reasons:

1. When you detach from outcomes, you relax more.
2. When you detach from outcomes, you lower your guard.
3. When you detach from outcomes, you lower other people’s guards.
4. When you detach from outcomes, you produce better quality work.
5. When you detach from outcomes, you lower the stakes and raise the results.

Author and creativity guru Mihály Csíkszentmihályi encourages the same.

He teaches artists, inventors and entrepreneurs to practice something called flow.

“What keeps you motivated is the quality of the experience you feel when you are involved with the activity. Enjoy the process of creation for its own sake.”

What’s more, Csíkszentmihályi’s idea of “flow” describes a person who is autotelic, not exotelic.

o Autotelic means there is there is no reason for doing something except to feel the experience it provides.

o Exotelic means people do things not because they enjoy them, but rather to accomplish a later goal.

So, if you want to produce better quality creative material, strive to be more autotelic.

Love the work more than what it produces.

See, it’s REALLY easy to create for the wrong reasons.

Money. Fame. Ego. Power. Self-validation. Approval.

All are outcomes.

Which doesn’t mean they’re bad things!

They just suggest that your creative process is results-based, not process-based.

SO, HERE’S YOUR CHALLENGE: focus on process, not product.

Verbs, not nouns.
Pursuit, not attainment.
Journey, not destination.

Don’t do it all for the nookie.

Do it because you love doing it.

Detach from outcomes.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Why do you create?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
Share your best technique for detaching from outcomes here!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag

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