If you’re a user of Facebook, LinkedIn, or other popular social media, you may have seen a quote by a fellow named Jack Dixon:
If you focus on results, you will never change. If you focus on change, you will get results.
The interesting thing is that while this quotation is posted in hundreds of blogs and Web sites that provide motivation, there are very few that say who Jack Dixon is.
According to the relatively few Web sites that connect the quote to the man,
Coming from an author, it’s more than a creative turn of words; it’s at the core of any change experience.
You may have experienced this effect yourself. Perhaps you have, or have known someone who has, tried to lose weight. Diet, exercise, supplements and all those things aside, you step on a scale every day at the same time of day, and chart your results, hoping to see significant change.
And it doesn’t happen.
Why? You may have not exercised as you should have; you may have attended a party, and overindulged a bit. You may have forgotten to employ some type of practice for a couple of days during the week. But yet, you’ve stuck to the schedule of weighing yourself every day, at the same time.
The tracking isn’t the issue; the practice is. Deciding to begin a regimen is easy when results are since quickly; but many processes take time to produce significant effects. Significant discipline is necessary to pay attention to and follow the process, and then, track the results less frequently than you think you should. Perhaps every week…or every month…rather than every day.
Perhaps we should rephrase the quotation a bit. Focusing on the change may produce the desired results; but focusing on the desired results may cause frustration with change.
But when we really think about it, do we really want change, when what we really want is transformation? If so, then a focus on the desired results is like paying constant attention to the bottom line. Think about all those folks that walk along sidewalk while looking down at the their mobile device. If you’re always looking down at the bottom line, and not paying attention to the things around you and, especially, in front of you, there’s a really good chance you’re going to run into something – perhaps even into a wall.