What to Do When You Can't Control the Outcomes (The Honour Question)
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Messages about the human experience often come to me via my clients.
I remember really clearly how I saw a pattern in my work over the space of a few weeks when three different clients with three different areas of work came to me. Each of them, underneath their challenges, was asking this question:
How do I do this thing without compromising who I am?
And I realised I’d seen it so many times before. Whether it was about influence in their organisation, public speaking, getting promoted, selling, running a business, so many other things… how do I do this without compromising who I am?
That signal from the universe helped me connect things I’d been reaching to connect for years. What does honour really mean in today’s world?
Well, I thought, perhaps it is this: to do the thing you want to do, reach the next level of success if you can, without compromising who you are.
That, surely, is the lesson of so many of our stories about honour.
Later, from Fred Kofman, I learned a question. It came from Kofman’s idea of Success Beyond Success.
In a complex world, we can’t always control the outcomes.
No matter what we do, no matter how well we take responsibility for our part in a situation, no matter how much we play the Player and not the Victim, we don’t always get what we wan’t.
So, in those cases where we can’t control the outcome, what can we do?
Well, we can strive for success, because it’s worth striving for.
And we can control how we act as we do that striving.
We can make sure we live our values.
We can make sure we don’t compromise who we are.
We can guarantee success beyond success.
Kofman shared the question he asks of people when their goal is outside of their control. It’s a question I now work on with many of my clients. I call it The Honour Question, because it makes sure we are honouring ourselves and acting with honour as we work towards our goals.
It makes sure we don’t compromise who we are.
It makes sure we are focused not just on success, but on success beyond success.
Here’s The Honour Question:
What do you need to do so that, regardless of the outcome, you will be at peace with yourself?
When you have a goal, take some time to ask yourself that question. It will help you honour yourself: that you take the goal seriously and work towards it; and it will help you act with honour, making sure you don’t compromise who you are in service of the goal.
When I’m working with a business person or a salesperson for example, who has a financial target, we want to have the target.
That’s important. Business results matter.
But we want to be careful: the client (and I) might do everything right, and yet shifting market conditions, changing leadership in the company, global pandemics or unexpected decisions in governments halfway around the world might happen.
And we might be left with nothing.
But, what do we need to do so that, regardless of the outcome, we can be at peace with ourselves?
And out, here, come the client’s values.
I need to try new things.
I need to choose a plan and stick to it.
I need to be consistent.
I need to not give up.
I need to call those people there, even though I’m scared of doing it.
In the end, all we have is this one, precious life.
As Kofman says, one day we’re going to get old, get sick and die. If we’re lucky.
The absolute best case is one day we get old, get sick and die and we do that after our parents and before our children.
You can’t control the outcomes in your life.
You can choose where to point yourself, though. Which things you will work towards.
Which things you will be a commitment to.
And you don’t have to compromise who you are as you work towards those things.
You can live a life of honour.
If you ask yourself The Honour Question, and then you do those things, you’ll be giving yourself a gift.
The gift of being the kind of person you are on your best days.
The Higher Parts of you.
You’ll be giving yourself the gift of inner peace.
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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.