Do It Because You Want To, Not Because You Want Something

Outcome independence is the cheat code for a better life.

I held the door open for her and let her walk through first. She didn’t bother to smile, nod, or even look me in the eyes as a sign of acknowledging my gesture. I was taken for granted like I was some kind of servant whose job it was to hold doors open for people. “Go fuck yourself”, I thought.

This exact situation has occurred countless times in my life. I was raised to hold the door open for strangers, but not all of them were raised to say thanks.

I don’t expect a knee fall or such the like. A smile, a wink, or at least eye contact and a little nod would’ve done the trick. Just show me you acknowledge it.

A few years back, I had a conversation about the topic that still sticks to my mind today. A friend of mine told me if I wanted to stop getting annoyed, I had to act independently of the outcome or not act at all.

The problem when you make your own mood or well-being dependent on an outcome is that you’re not in charge of your own life. You cannot control external circumstances, and if things don’t go as expected, you’ll feel miserable, angry, and powerless.

We all do it.

You tell a joke in hope of being funny. But people don’t get it and look at you with Stonehenge faces, so you feel like a bad clown with no sense of humor.

You send someone a long text pouring out your heart in hope of an equal reply. But when they hit you with the Ok, you feel ashamed and worthless.

You go out of your way to polish a presentation at work in hope of praise. But when your boss looks at it, he scoffs at the bright colors and lame designs, so you feel frustrated, disappointed, and like a failure.

If you make yourself dependent on external circumstances or the reactions of other people, you’ll never be true to yourself. Your happiness and how you feel will forever be at someone else’s mercy.

What you need to do instead is to develop outcome independence.

Why? Because it’s one of the cheat codes for life.

• It is the secret to true confidence. You’ll trust yourself, your abilities, and your character regardless of the outcome. You’ll know you are a valuable human being, even if things don’t go as planned.
• It allows you to live a life true to yourself. You’ll stop seeking external approval and instead become self-validated. You’ll be happy by yourself and the way you are, regardless of what other people think. Outcome independence is the only way to be “real” and follow your life’s purpose.
• You can let go of fears, anxieties, and worries. How many things would you like to do but don’t because you’re afraid something might happen? You’ll be free to act without stressing about what other people or your inner critic could say about you. You’ll become one of the guys who “just do it.”
• You become failure resistant. When you let go of your attachment to the outcome, failure doesn’t matter. You’ll be able to focus on giving your best shot without anxieties or stress about the end result — “the score takes care of itself”, as three times Superbowl winner Bill Walsh said. You’ll also be able to get back up, shake it off, and keep going after life beat you down.

The million-dollar question now is: What is outcome independence exactly, and how can you achieve it?

Outcome Independence — the Art of Not Giving a Shit

Outcome independence. Making yourself vulnerable. Being authentic.

There are multiple ways to phrase it, but the concept is always the same.

You put yourself out there and act based on what you think is right, without knowing what will happen and without hoping for a certain outcome. You just do what you do because you think it’s right. That’s the goal.

In reality, we humans often castrate ourselves because we hope for a certain outcome or are afraid of another.

You don’t approach the woman on the street because you are afraid of rejection.

You don’t voice your unconventional opinions and views because others might make fun of you.

You don’t put full effort into a project that could turn around your life because you’re afraid that you might fail.

The result? You’re not true to yourself. You’re not outcome independent. Instead, you make your happiness and approval dependent on external circumstances you can’t control. You’re not in charge of your life.

Outcome independence is the blinders that keep your view clear of all the bullshit that might or might not happen. It enables you to focus completely on the prize. It’s “do your best and forget the rest” taken to its core.

You have to stop defining yourself based on outcomes, which are always subject to external circumstances. Becoming independent and defining yourself based on what you can control and the human you are rests on three pillars.

1. Acceptance of failure and rejection

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

— Michael Jordan

This is by far the biggest hurdle for you. You, me, and we all are taught that failure and rejection are bad. It starts in school, where you get a bad grade if you don’t know the correct answer. When you are a teenager, others laugh at you when a girl tells you to bugger off. At work, you always look for the right way to do it.

Of course, your goal is to become better, make as few mistakes as possible, and succeed. But failure is an essential part of that path.

You, me, and everybody make mistakes all the time. They’re our biggest teachers. But to learn from them and grow, you have to accept that they are a part of our natural learning process.

Real strength and courage don’t lie in not making mistakes at all, but in accepting and learning from them.

2. Acting based on your values

To live a life true to yourself, you first need to know who you are. You need to know what’s important to you, what your opinions are, and what your purpose in life is. This requires some introspection, but you have to make up your mind about how you want to live your life and what your values are. There is no best or right way to live life, but you have to find your own. Others will find their own, too, and often your views will differ or even clash. Acknowledge their opinions but decide on your own. Express yourself and live your life the way you think it’s right, even though others might live theirs differently.

3. Continuous growth and development

Life is an endless climb. Sometimes it’s steep, sometimes there’s a plateau you can rest on, but you’ll always have to climb. You’re scaling a mountain without a top.

But life isn’t about reaching the top. It never was, although you’ll often be told that if you just do this or buy that, your life will be perfect, and you’ll be happy forever. You won’t. The joy in life is in the climb itself. It’s in growing and developing yourself. You will always have problems, but if you grow, you’ll start to have better ones. Your values, views, and opinions will always change, but if you work on yourself, they’ll become more sophisticated, refined, and a little less wrong. Life isn’t about being perfect. You’ll have to accept that you never will be but and still put in the work to become the best version of yourself. That’s where true confidence comes from.

These three components make up the outcome independent mindset.

You accept failure and rejection as part of the path. You know yourself, your values, and act true to who you are. You understand that life isn’t about reaching an arbitrary mountain top, but about the climb itself.

How to Detach Yourself from Outcomes

“Life is better when you stop caring so much.”

Outcome independence is a skill or habit like any other. You have to train yourself to not give a shit, which sounds a lot easier than it often is.

You often have to deal with lifelong conditioning and beliefs that are hard to let go of. It’s difficult, but definitely possible.

The good thing is that you can practice it while going about your normal life. No need for daily power sessions, wearing fancy meditation headbands, or getting up at 5 am.

Still, outcome independence often is a long-term game, and you can’t fake it. You need to practice a lot, but it will have a tremendous positive impact on how you go through your life.

It’s the secret to true confidence, living a life that’s true to yourself, letting go of fears, anxieties, and worries, and becoming failure-resistant.

Big challenge, big reward.

Don’t check

The easiest way to become more outcome-independent is to avoid checking outcomes altogether. When I publish an article on Medium, I don’t check the stats or views until a week or two after. It takes off the pressure and anxiety you usually have before hitting “publish.” You learn to put yourself out there and have others judge you without it affecting yourself.

When you upload a photo to social media, don’t check the likes. When you send a risky text, turn your phone or WiFi off for a few hours.

When you don’t check outcomes, you’ll learn to detach yourself from them. They’ll become less and less important to you, and you can be more and more yourself.

Do your best and be yourself because you want to, not because you want a certain reaction.

Do things purely for the sake of doing them

Every morning, I send out a text message to one of my friends or family members, wishing them a good day or sharing what’s on my mind. I never ask a question and there’s no need to reply. It’s a simple message I send because I want to contribute kindness to this world. I don’t care if they reply or not or if they think I’m weird.

Doing something for the sake of it teaches you to let go of any potential outcomes.

Your hobbies or passions are a great place to start. Grow a plant because you enjoy the process of watering, nurturing, and watching it grow. Don’t do it because you want something that’s nice to look at — that’s just a bonus.

Cook at home not because you want to save money or impress your date with fancy meals. Do it because you enjoy trying, combining, and tasting different ingredients and foods.

Don’t exercise because you want a beach body. Instead, find joy in the exercise itself — the sweat, the pain, the endorphins, and becoming better than you were yesterday.

Do something purely for the sake of it, and you’ll be surprised about what’ll happen to your performance. The shift from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation will often make it skyrocket. You let go of external judgments, requirements, and approvals, and fall in love with the process instead of the outcome.

Seek out rejection and mistakes

I once met a guy who wanted to get better at approaching women but was deadly afraid of rejection. He would chicken out last second, turn around, and not talk to the woman at all — he was so dependent on the outcome that his fear literally paralyzed him.

What he then did was ingenious. He set himself the goal to get a no. He wanted to get rejected, which alleviated all of his fear around it. Then, he proceeded to collect no after no, until he didn’t care about it anymore.

Rejection and mistakes are a natural part of life. Due to your societal conditioning, you’re deadly afraid of them, when in fact, you should embrace them.

You need to recondition yourself by actively seeking out the outcomes you’re afraid of. Over time, your brain will learn that even in the worst-case scenario, nothing significant happens. Earth keeps turning, and your life goes on.

Ask for feedback when you know you haven’t done well on something. Do things you’re afraid of and you know you’ll fail at.

Get used to mistakes and rejection and grow a thick skin. You’ll realize that most of the outcomes that look terrible and catastrophic in your head have very little impact on your life at all.

Practice the 1/10 rule

When you are in the heat of the moment, you often assign way more significance to an incident or outcome than you actually should.

Writing and publishing an article I’ve put a lot of work into often feels like a matter of life and death. But in reality, they only make up a tiny little fraction of my overall writing and it doesn’t matter if one of them tanks.

Approaching a woman sets of all the alarms in your body, especially when other people are around and might notice when you get rejected. What if they laugh? Even if things go wrong, chances are you’ll never see any of these people again. And even if, they probably won’t care about you.

A big meeting at work can often cause sleepless nights, even though nobody will remember what it even was about in a few weeks from now.

When you look at a situation rationally, it’s almost never as bad as you make it out at the moment. But you’ll have to use a little trick to remind you of this.

If it doesn’t matter in one month from now, don’t spend more than 10 minutes worrying about it.

This simple exercise helps you to focus on the bigger picture and be less tense about a specific outcome.

Don’t worry about what you can’t control

“Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: Some things are within our control, and some things are not. It is only after you have faced up to this fundamental rule and learned to distinguish between what you can and can’t control that inner tranquility and outer effectiveness become possible.”

— Epictetus

This principle isn’t only one of the keystones of Stoic philosophy, but also one of the best pieces of advice I ever read.

It will make about 50% of your problems disappear in an instant. See, most problems or challenges are comprised of parts you have control over and parts you don’t.

If you have a job interview, you can’t control if the guy on the other side of the table likes you or not, finds your references credible, laughs at your jokes, or gives you the job. You have no control over his mind and therefore, no control over the outcome.

What you do have control over is how you present and dress yourself, how you prepare for the day, and if you leave early enough to be on time.

Always ask yourself “What do I have control over?” and then act accordingly.

Redirect your energy and focus to the things you can influence and away from outcomes you have no control over.

Nothing Matters, That’s Why You Have to Do It

“If you act with intent, no one can take that away from you. Even if the outcome is a complete disaster.”

— Akiroq Brost

This will sound nihilistic, but nothing you will ever do is significant. On a cosmic scale, you’re incredibly small and your lifespan is a mere blink of an eye in the 13.8 bn years the universe has existed for.

Of course, if you approached life that way, you could dive head-first into a garbage truck or rob a bank because hey, nothing matters anyway.

That’s not the point. The point is to remind yourself every now and then that you attach too much significance to outcomes that really don’t matter all that much.

Life’s too short to take it too seriously. Whatever happens, the earth will keep turning, and life will go on.

There is no right or best way to live life, but one thing is for sure. If you want to live your life — a life true to yourself — you can’t make yourself dependent on the outcome. You have no control over it.

Instead, focus on what you can control. Accept mistakes and rejection to learn from them, act right and live a life true to yourself and your values, and keep growing and developing yourself.

Let go of the outcome and embrace an authentic life.

Outcome independency is one way to be confident in yourself, but there is also another path you can take to build healthy self-esteem.

Get The Authentic Man 5–3–1 Newsletter

5 minutes to read. 3 ideas, quotes, and questions to help you become a more Authentic Man. 1 biweekly challenge to get you closer to your dream life. Become the best version of your true self in under 5 minutes!