Dave Evans

Am I paying attention or am I thinking about what I'm going to have with dinner with my friend who's staying over at the house tonight?

So I want to be fully engaged, but I also want to be calmly detached because there's this thing called the outcome of what I'm doing that, in truth, I have no control over.

At the end of the day, doing the right thing is all I can do the best I can possibly do.

So I can control my participation, but I cannot control the outcome.

And it turns out those two things then become competitors.

If I get too wound up in worrying about the outcome, is this going to go well?

Is Shankar going to like the episode?

I wonder what the listeners will think.

If I'm too distracted...

by my involvement in the outcome.

I'm too attached to that outcome.

It's going to get in the way of my participation.

So the best way to be fully engaged is to let go of the outcome and then we'll take things as they come.

Being all committed to the outcome that you have in mind, frankly, completely takes you out of what you're already doing.

It's not that I don't care.

It's that I'm not so committed to it and involved to it that I now am staking my reputation on it.

I'm staking my identity.

And now I've got a psychological attachment to it.

And it's all about me.

So what it really boils down to is recognizing that it's not about you all the time.