Don’t Play the Result

The other day, I had a powwow with a friend about an uncertain situation she’s in.  She wasn’t quite sure what to do about it, and after an hour and a half of throwing our best masterminding skillz at it, I wasn’t really sure, either.

We’re both of the highly analytical (a.k.a. “overthinking”) variety, so we’d done a great job of exploring every possible angle of the situation, decoding any meaning that might potentially be there, forecasting every outcome imaginable.  We’d psychoanalyzed the shit out of it, if I do say so myself.

But that didn’t solve her immediate, most obvious problem:  What was she supposed to do about all this in the morning?

Alex P. Keaton, What Don’t You Know?

 At this point in the conversation, my friend remembered something she’d heard recently, which immediately became both of our new mantras.

She recently saw Michael J. Fox speak at one of our local colleges.  The optimism and activism he’s shown towards his Parkinson’s diagnosis is truly an inspiration—but one thing in particular really struck her from his speech.

Here’s a summary of the idea as he explained it in a magazine interview:

You know, there’s a rule in acting called “Don’t play the result.”  If you have a character who’s going to end up in a certain place, don’t play that until you get there.  Play each scene and each beat as it comes.  And that’s what you do in your life:  You don’t play the result.

So you get diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and you can play the result.  You can go right to, ‘Oh, I’m sick.’  It took me seven years to figure out that I’m not at the result.  I’m not at the result till the end.  So let’s not play it.  It’s not written yet.  And so that’s the attitude I take in life.  ~Michael J. Fox, Good Housekeeping interview

How often do we “play the result” (expect the worst, brace for bad news, etc.)?  Many of us approach uncertain situations as though the outcome is already a given (and usually it’s bad).

We go into working dreading a crappy day—and it usually turns into a crappy day because we’re specifically looking out for the crap.

We hear a rumor that our company is considering layoffs, so we assume we’re done for, and it makes us miserable and anxious and angry—even if the ax never winds up falling.

We take a chance on starting our own business, but we’re instantly wracked with visions of failure, debt, and public humiliation—so we scrap the whole thing before it’s even had a chance to get off the ground.

But the outcome isn’t certain.  The only thing certain is the day you have right in front of you, and what you’re going to do with it.  There’s no sense in flinching for a blow that may never come.  You have to just go about your business as best you can.

Borrowing Tomorrow’s Trouble

 Another quote I’ve always enjoyed, which M.J.’s philosophy reminded me of:

Worrying is carrying tomorrow’s load with today’s strength— carrying two days at once.  It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time.  Worrying doesn’t empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.  ~Corrie ten Boom

We have enough to worry about and deal with in the here and now.  Why borrow trouble from the future, especially when it might not even materialize?

My friend finally decided that she was going to approach her situation with a “Don’t play the result” attitude.  There were too many components and too many unknowns to factor them into her decision of how she was going to act in the immediate future.  All she could do was take each issue as it came, deal with it whatever way she thought right, and wait to see how it all played out.  That’s really all any of us can do, anyway, whether we’re borrowing trouble or not.

So, why make it more difficult for ourselves?

What trouble are YOU borrowing that you don’t need to?

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