What’s the difference between a process and an outcome?

One way to describe them is that the process is a way to get an outcome. Or you may say that a process is made of many, many outcomes that lead to a greater outcome.

Or you may say that a process is a consistently evolving system based on tons of interdependent variables and feedback loops. An outcome is an event in time or a thing.

Take rain and the weather, for example. The weather is always changing, always in flux, and always feeding back into itself. The amount of variables are few, and are inorganic. Pressure, wind speed, heat, humidity, that’s about it. 

The outcome is the weather event. Rain, snow hail, whatever. Of course, each event, if you drill down into the time span is a process unto itself. The process of rain can cause all kinds of events, or outcomes. And in turn, they themselves are processes that create outcomes.

The weather is the process that creates an outcome of rain. Rain is a process that creates an outcome of wet soil. We soil is a process that leads to mature corn. Mature corn is a process than turns into popcorn. And and on. In reality, there’s not a hard limit between any process, and any outcome.

It all depends on your frame of reference.

One life long process that many guys treat as an outcome is male and female interactions.

Even within a relationship, a happy committed relationship, the process is ALWAYS changing. The needs, wants, desires, subjective beliefs and values of each person are ALWAYS changing.

Once you get past that lovey dovey super sex part, a real relationship takes a ton of work. Real work, not just check-the-boxes-off-a-list work.

That’s why so many relationships fail. Neither person is willing to put in any work after the lovey dovey sex magic ends, and the real give and take begins.

Of course, if all you care about is the lovey dovey super sex part, and you’re happy to be a serial monogamist your entire life, more power to you. Plenty of people are happy with that, men and women.

But if you want something more, you’ve got to understand that ALL aspects of human relationships RARELY leave the process stage.

Unless you’re at a funeral, and your throwing dirt on a dead dude in a box.

So next time your out in a social setting, and you see some girl you’d like to talk to, think of your potential interaction with her as one long process.

Instead of saying, “how can I GET some of that,” which implies you’re going after some static “thing,” think more in process terms.

“How can I create a sustained interaction with that person that will satisfy both of our wants and needs in a way that will make us both better off than we are now?”

Or if that sentence is too long, how about this one:

“I wonder if we can build something together.”

Try this, and see what happens.

mindpersuasion.com