Your Job is the Effort, Not the Outcome

In my life, I’ve learned the hard way that control is an illusion. Had I insisted to control what’s not within my control, I would not have grown as a human being.

Psychopathology is often the result of not embracing this basic truth in our lives.

Generally, we want to control and secure results. Even in relationships or situations where we don’t possess any power for that.

Hindsight was valuable for Rebecca. In sessions with her husband, she had to learn a “different language” in order to heal.

When she tried to make her unfaithful husband a “project” and control him through her tantrums and threats, the more he grew distant and unresponsive.

Only after she became more respectful towards him and focused on her self did she begin to receive kinder, more favorable overtures from him.

Rebecca’s efforts in their marital therapy process were rewarded. Just on the nick of time!

In psychotherapy, as in love, your job is not the outcome. Your job is the effort.

Doing your part and letting go of the rest ensures your mental health and wholeness.

Author Karen Casey, in her book “Let Go Now,“ says,

“Detaching from outcomes, those that apply to us and those that apply to the actions of others, is the surest way to a peaceful day. Trying is believing.”

After your best efforts, that’s doing the “art of letting life happen by itself,” as Jungian psychologists put it.