Henrik Edberg has a great post over at The Positivity Blog. It’s called 11 Questions That Could Help You to Vastly Improve the Quality of Your Life in 2009 and is well worth a read.

One of the questions that made me stop and think more than the others was number ten: “Am I detached from the results? “. Now one of the things I’m constantly talking about is the importance of remembering why you’re doing things, using the reasons to provide guidance and motivation. At first sight this would seem to be at odds with staying detached from results.

Yet I completely agree with Henrik when he says:

But when you play/blog/work etc. stay unattached to the outcome. Just focus on what’s in front of you. Things will become easier. You’ll create less inner anxiety and pressure for yourself. And you will perform better because you are focusing on what’s right in front of you and not weighing yourself down with a lot of imagined or real expectations from other people and self-created negativity.

How to reconcile the two approaches?

Fortunately the apparent contradiction is only surface deep, it’s possible to have both.

Remembering the “why” is a high level thing, it provides the motivation to get going and keep going. It’s not something that you think about constantly. Use the “why” to get you started then put it to one side unless your motivation flags.

So as I write this blog post I’m very aware of the “why” in high level terms, I know what this blog and hence this post contribute to my life. So I’m happy to be writing it. But at the same time I’m not agonising over whether this particular post will receive loads of comments, links etc – I’m just writing it the best way I can.

“Why am I doing this?” and “Am I detached from the results?” may seem contradictory, but I think they actually go well together. Ask “Why?” then, once you have the answer, you can let go from it and be fully motivated in the moment.

Photo Credit: laffy4k (Creative Commons)