Why obsessive focus on the desired outcome leads to poor results

“Like everyone else you want to learn the way to win, but never to accept the way to lose. To accept defeat, to learn to die is to be liberated from it. So when tomorrow comes you must free your ambitious mind and learn the art of dying!” -Bruce Lee

This is absolutely crucial for anyone who wants to reach mastery and peak performance. Whenever your mind is occupied with public opinions and results, you are no longer present. But being present in the moment, observing yourself in the action independent of any outcome is what paradoxically brings good results. Just a simple academic example. Do you remember yourself before an exam when you were trembling and had a desperate and obsessive desire for an A? Whenever it happened to me, I always did poorly. Since I was focused on the desired outcome, my focus was not on the actual performance. Risks and mistakes are inevitable for those who want to make progress. Accepting the fact that failures are unavoidable, part of the game, part of the learning process is ‘surprisingly’ very effective.

Garry Kasparov (when discussing the risk averse culture in life and business at Authors@Google) put this really well, “Let’s forget about avoiding mistakes. If we don’t make mistakes, we’re dead. Making mistakes is a part of any normal decision making process”.

The intended portion starts at 1:30 — http://youtu.be/rGJPF1c2GHE?t=1m30s