How to Think Better: creating results

You’re creating results all the time. Whether you realize it or not. When you…

  • Hit the snooze button for the third time.
  • Put your relationships on the back burner.
  • Don’t pick up the phone and make that call.
  • Postpone working on your dream.
  • Choose screen time over real-time connecting.
  • Refuse to ask for help.
  • Procrastinate about making that doctor appointment.
  • Opt out of being the heroine of your own story.

All those actions and inactions are creating results in your life.

But you’re also creating results in less obvious ways.

  • It’s that limiting belief about whether you have what it takes.
  • It’s that glass half empty mindset that sees only problems, never opportunities.
  • It’s that assumption about what it would take to leave a soul-deadening job.
  • It’s that habit of waiting until some day off in the future to be happy.

Yes, you create results with your goals and actions and the choices you make every day.

But you also create results with your beliefs—about the world around you and about yourself. With your assumptions and expectations about what’s possible—and not.

In some ways it seems a heavy burden that each and every action is creating a result. Along with each and every inaction. Each and every belief. Each and every habit. It can feel like too much.

But the flip side is what’s known as agency.

  • That YOU have the capacity to create the results you want.
  • That your actions DO matter.
  • That your beliefs and habits DO make a difference.
  • That your assumptions and expectations DO, indeed, influence the outcome.

I don’t know about you, but when I believe I can’t do something, I don’t even try. When I expect a fight, I usually get one. When I think things are going to be hard, they are.

But when I look for ways to make some new endeavor easy (or at least easier), almost magically there seems to be a way.

Here’s the thing: None of it is really magic.

It’s just that what you do and think matters.

The steps you take—well, they take you in a direction. And the steps you don’t take, keep you where you are.

Believe me, I know I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. That your life story doesn’t already tell.

But it’s easy to disempower ourselves by thinking a stray action here or there doesn’t really matter. Or our negative internal dialogue is harmless. False and false.

You’re creating results—right now. Are they the ones you want?

If not, what actions would you need to take to get the results you want? And just as important, what would you need to stop doing? What habits would you need to cultivate? What beliefs and assumptions would you need to hold—or let go of?