Dave Evans

And now suddenly I'll get expectations and I'm getting all wrapped up and I'm getting anxious.

So what I want to be, which I think is a very aspirational place, I want to be fully engaged.

I want to care really deeply and bring my best self and recognize that I have very little control over whether or not the outcome works.

And so I can be both those things at the same time.

which is really freeing, by the way, if I can detach from the outcome while being fully engaged in the participation.

The big distinction in the mindset between the transactionalist and the flowist, the flow-oriented person, is the transactionalist is all about outcomes.

They're primarily the agent of an outcome, and the flow person is a participant.

Now, that participant may be participating in a way that hopefully creates an outcome, but my energy isn't worrying about that future outcome.

My energy is in participating fully in this moment, which is, by the way, the single best way to improve the probability of the outcome.

So getting really good at this present moment thing has huge side effects.

They work both ways.

You're not giving up transaction success by becoming more flow-oriented.

What you're giving up is wasting energy that's not contributing.

Well, the first one is that we correlate our decision-making with the outcome.

So, you know, okay, try it this way.

You work hard on something you really care about and it doesn't work out.

Shoot.

What's the first question most people ask themselves as soon as something doesn't work out?

Bingo.

And by the way, questions matter, particularly the questions you empower to judge or direct your life.