The Outcome Matters

One of the most common things people hear in sports, business, and personal development is, “Don’t think about the outcome.”

I understand why people say it. If you become obsessed with results, pressure can build quickly. You can lose focus, force things, and start worrying more about the future than what needs to happen right now.

But I also believe something important gets missed when people say that.

You need something to shoot for.

You need vision.

You need purpose.

You need a target that inspires you to get out of bed in the morning and keep moving forward when things become difficult.

When I was part of the New York Rangers, we absolutely thought about the outcome. From the first day of training camp, the goal was clear. We wanted to win the Stanley Cup.

That vision mattered.

It created belief inside the locker room. It gave players direction. It unified the team around a common purpose. Nobody walked into that season hoping to simply “see what happens.” We believed we could accomplish something special.

But here is the key.

After setting the goal, we put it aside.

We did not wake up every day talking about lifting the Stanley Cup. We focused on what needed to happen that day. Practice. Conditioning. Recovery. Communication. Accountability. Film sessions. Competing in drills. Supporting teammates. Managing emotions. Preparing mentally and physically.

The outcome gave us direction.

The process gave us progress.

That lesson applies to every part of life.

So many people today either become obsessed with the result or they lose motivation because the result feels too far away. They focus so much on the future that they stop being present in the daily work that actually creates success.

Championships are not built in one moment.

Confidence is not built in one moment.

Transformation is not built in one moment.

It happens through consistent daily action.

One workout at a time.

One healthy decision at a time.

One conversation at a time.

One practice at a time.

One choice at a time.

The people who perform at a high level understand how to stay present while still keeping a larger vision in mind. They know how to separate goals from daily execution.

That is where mindset becomes so important.

Pressure often comes from living too far ahead mentally. You start worrying about whether you will succeed, fail, impress people, make money, win the championship, recover from adversity, or achieve your goals.

Meanwhile, your power only exists in the present moment.

The best athletes and performers are able to bring themselves back to the task directly in front of them.

The next shift.

The next meeting.

The next rep.

The next opportunity.

That does not mean the goal disappears. The vision remains in the background as fuel and motivation. But your focus stays connected to preparation and execution.

This is something I have seen repeatedly, both in sports and in life.

The people who grow the most are usually the people who commit to the process without constantly needing immediate results. They trust the work. They understand that progress takes time. They know there will be setbacks, adversity, frustration, and moments where things do not go according to plan.

But they continue showing up anyway.

That is where real confidence comes from.

Confidence is not just positive thinking. Confidence is built through preparation, repetition, resilience, and learning how to stay steady under pressure.

Even during difficult moments on our Stanley Cup team, we did not panic and suddenly abandon the process. We trusted our preparation. We trusted each other. We trusted the work we had already put in.

That mindset matters everywhere.

In business, people often focus so much on the final goal that they burn themselves out chasing quick results.

In health and fitness, people become discouraged because they do not see changes fast enough.

In parenting, athletes, leadership, and personal growth, people sometimes expect overnight transformation.

But meaningful growth rarely happens overnight.

The process is where growth lives.

The process teaches discipline.

The process teaches patience.

The process teaches resilience.

The process teaches presence.

And many times, when you fully commit yourself to the daily process, the outcome begins to take care of itself.

That does not mean every goal will happen exactly the way you imagined. Life does not always work that way. But focusing on the process gives you the best possible opportunity to create success while also enjoying the journey along the way.

At the end of the day, having a vision is important.

Goals matter.

Dreams matter.

Outcomes matter.

But after setting the goal, the challenge becomes learning how to return your attention back to the daily work required to get there.

Stay present.

Trust the process.

Focus on what you can control.

Keep showing up.

That is how big goals eventually become reality.

Continue Your Mindset Journey

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Healthy Mindset App Podcast, where host Mike Hartman, a performance coach and former professional athlete, brings his passion to help athletes and workplace athletes achieve their dreams and goals while being mindful of everything else in life. Mike also uses this platform to share his targeted assessment applications, healthy mindset course, meditation and goal setting technique for the athlete and workplace athlete. We're glad you're here. Now let's dive headfirst into this episode of the Healthy Mindset App Podcast. Here's your host, Mike Hartman.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Welcome back to another episode. And today I'm going to talk about what we hear a lot nowadays is the outcome and don't focus on the outcome. Kobe Bryant, when you read his book, he never thought about the outcome. But I guarantee you, as a uh player growing up, his vision was to play in the NBA. He wanted to win a championship. So I'm just going to try to clarify things. I'm never saying that anybody's wrong. I hear people say, don't even think about the outcome, focus on the process. But I'm going to tell you some things that helped me and some of the experience that I have had along the way. And the number one thing is if I didn't have a vision when I was young, I never would have made it in sports. I had a vision of playing in the NHL as a kid. My dream was to play one game. And I told my parents, hey, I want to play one game in the NHL. And my mother would say, Well, you're focusing on school now. If you're good enough, it's going to happen. But right now, you need to focus on school every day. You need to go to college. You need to think about the future. And what was that? That's that's still the outcome. So I still believe, like, number one, have a vision. You need something to shoot for. Uh, use the analogy if you're playing soccer or you're playing a sport and you take the goals away. It's boring. There's nothing to shoot for. So we always need something to shoot for. And I was on that Stanley Cup team in 1994 with the New York Rangers, and the first day of training camp, Mike Keenan took about 30 of us into a room, all of our players, and including players that were uh gonna possibly play for the team that year that year or maybe be up and down. But I remember there was 30 of us in there. In fact, we had a neutral psych game in England uh for the exhibition. So we had two games against the Toronto Maple Leafs in England. It was 1993, so early 1993, we were going to England, but before we did it, he wanted to show us what it meant to win in New York, and he showed us a big video of the Miracle Mets, not playing, not playing the games, but actually winning and having that big parade in New York City with millions of people hanging out the windows, and he wanted us to see that. But before we, of course, get to that level, there's so much more that had to be done. It's a long season, it's a long playoffs, it's it's tough. So from day one, that team had the vision of winning the Stanley Cup. So I believe in the outcomes because on that team we had six players, seven players that won Stanley Cups, and amazing players that nobody even talks about today uh on that team, like uh Steve Larmer, who played the most amount of games in the NHL. Uh, he had that record going for a while, and I can't remember if he still had that record, but I know he got traded to us from Chicago, and you know, he had that record. Greg Gilbert, who was uh on and off the fourth line, and guy like Gibby, he won it with the New York Islanders, and the experience, let's not focus on all the other players that won, but that experience was they saw themselves winning a Stanley Cup. I room with Clark Gillies, and Clark uh was a hero of mine growing up. I got to room with him in Buffalo, and he won four Stanley Cups with the New York Islanders. And at that time, I mean he passed away a few years ago, which was it was awful for for a lot of us uh and his family. But um, I asked Clark, what was it like winning the Stanley Cup? He says, Well, we knew what we had to do, we knew what we had to do to win, and we focused on that first, but we still had that that that purpose for what we wanted to do. So I'll never forget that. So put the outcome aside, number two. So after you have that dream, like, hey, you want to play Division I sports, I want to get a race with my company, or no matter what it is, you put the outcome aside after setting the goal. So you cannot obsess over it every day. You can't say, Oh, what's gonna happen every day? When am I gonna get this uh raise? When am I I gotta get to college? Uh, I had a bad game, I'm so I'm not gonna, if a college scout was there, they're not gonna like me. That's when you find yourself getting into trouble and you build that pressure. And then what happens is the focus will drift away from what you're actually trying to create is that success for yourself. So the next thing is to is focus on the process daily. I don't care what anybody says, championships are built through daily habits, and that's why um for me I wanted when I developed our system, I wanted to make sure that number one thing that we did is we help people with daily habits uh through uh you know through our system that we have within our business. But it was it like it helps with preparation, recovery, practice, mindset, consistency. And I recently saw it might have been like a year ago, uh, Derek Jeter. He talked about you know what what his biggest fear was, and it was it was not being prepared. And he had one vision of winning the World Series. That's it, and then if you ask him, what was his best years, and he'll rattle off every year with the World Series that they won. And I think the reporter said, What? Come on, really? You what about your year? You had uh, you know, he had Golden Glob, he was uh playing out of his mind. He goes, No, it's when he won, but he envisioned himself winning, just like every elite athlete does. They see themselves winning and winning a championship, winning uh, you know, a college championship. I guarantee you, when you when you're watching a uh you know a Division I football game, and it's let's say it's Michigan playing like last year, and they saw themselves that coach before the year says, okay, we what is it gonna take for this team, you know, to win a national championship? And what's it gonna take, you know, when basketball or whatever the sport is, it takes that vision, but you still can't think about the outcome every day, but you still need something to shoot for. And I always liked the you know, I learned as a player, especially towards the end of my career, even with the Rangers where I was in and out of the lineup, I only played 35 games that year on a championship team. Sat out a lot, and I was hurt quite a bit, but that wasn't the reason why I didn't play towards the end. I'm not gonna, you know, leave that, you know, false pretense. I'm not gonna leave that. Oh, you were I was injured, I didn't play, but I was sitting out. I was a what is called a support player. You come in the lineup, you play three games, no matter how well you play, you might sit five games, or you might sit two, you might play ten in a row and sit eight. It was tough, so I always had to be prepared and I knew that I was gonna say to myself, even back then in 1994, I said, I need a win of the day, I need a good practice, I need to play hard, I need to train after. If the practice didn't go the way I wanted it to, I needed to get into that training room and do extra on the bike, extra conditioning because I didn't have my legs. And sometimes we didn't have a choice, and other times it may have been optional, but I made sure I did it every day. But I always made sure I was gonna have a win of the day. So instead of worrying about the entire season or focusing on what didn't go well that day, I wanted to make sure that I would do um I would outwork everybody, and you could take the same approach into corporate America. The win of the day, what was it? It's been tough. I work with a lot of realtors, and I hear that this is this is the toughest market. Sometimes nothing's happening, sometimes the phone is ringing, and it's tough. It's like you're on an island by yourself sometimes, even if you have support from the company. So, even being that realtor, you have to say, What was the win of the day? Well, I was introduced to a contact. Now what you have to follow up. The outcome isn't the outcome will work out for itself, but the but the goal is to we want to actually sell that property, right? Sell that home or whatever it may be. But you still have to think about the process. And the next one is this is where it says is staying present under pressure. They call it mindfulness, which to me we didn't talk about too much in the day, but to me, staying present under pressure pulls people into the future. I learned that. Like I watched our teammates in New York, even back in the 90s. I watched what it took to win, I saw it. But the great performers always bring themselves back to the moment. Okay, we had a tough night. Let's go, let's get ready now, let's have a good meal, let's focus on tomorrow. So when versity would hit your team or even your team in corporate America or your own company, you have to trust the work that's already that you put in and the work ahead of you. I had uh I was working with a baseball player, and his dream was to play one game of pro baseball. Uh, his name is Will McGarrian. He played Division I. In fact, on the terrible note, his coach was in the helicopter with Kobe when that helicopter went down. So he transferred. But I love this guy. And then he said, My outcome is what I want to do is I want to be part of I want to be an exercise physiologist. I want to be an exercise scientist, I want to be something around exercise. And he goes to a team, and when he gets to that team, I think a new coach came in, the one that did not recruit him to go to that other school, and told him he's not gonna play much. So now he's a regular player in California, goes and plays on a different team in school, and he was he's pinch running, he's not playing. And instead of burning a bridge, because the outcome was yeah, I want to play a uh one game in may in in pro baseball, which he did. He played uh rookie ball, but the point is he had that vision, and then he also wanted to not burn his bridge uh within his uh you want to be an exercise physiologist. Well, now he's working for uh I think he's working for Boston College now or Boston University, and uh he took on a job and he's he's training athletes, the football team, the baseball team, many sports, and then now he's working his way up to even possibly going beyond that. But the outcome was it wasn't working out for him. He he didn't want to be negative because he didn't he knew what he wanted, he wanted that game of pro baseball, and he loved training players. His dad worked for the New York Giants, so I think he already had that work ethic. Just a great kid. I love this kid. I can't call him a kid anymore. I worked with Will for several years, but his work ethic was unbelievable. And all the adversity that he went through, losing his coach, not playing, not sure what's gonna happen, he ends up uh doing what he loves to do now. So we always have to think about it, we have to shoot for it. And that leads into my next thing is keep adjusting. Uh goals could stay the same, but uh the path may change. All of a sudden it's not working out somewhere. Maybe uh a good example with Will, he's in a position where you know what they they're bringing on somebody else, so maybe his path may change, but you still have to keep thinking positive. You you still have to be grateful for where you are. I heard somebody say recently that you know uh use it as motivation. I'm not a big motivational person. Uh yes, we like motivation. When I speak to companies, the first thing I tell them I'm not a motivational speaker because that's a yeah, rah-rah speech, then they leave. But I love to instill a system so you have this system and you want to see yourself being successful, and that's where the outcome comes in. The other thing is enjoy the journey. People ask me all the time, what was the number one thing as a hockey player that you wanted us? I wanted to have fun. I just talked to uh Don Luce, and Don was the uh he drafted me to the Buffalo Sabres. He's one of my most favorite people in the world. He called to see how I was doing, and I wanted to talk. Okay, 10 minutes, I'm great, Don. Now, how are you doing? Because he was one of the best development uh coaches I've seen. He's he was um he does that now. He did it with the Philadelphia Flyers, he did it with the Toronto Maple Leafs, he did it with the Buffalo Sabres, and he calmed me. I remember it was training camp in Buffalo. I was 19 years old, he pulled me aside. He said, Okay, you're playing well, keep up the pace, and uh and I said, Don, I really want to make this team, I want to play for the Buffalo Sabres. I I'm ready. He goes, Well, just take that's a good way to look at it. Look at that, but number one, focus on where you are now, and I'll never forget that. I talk to Don every now and then, just a super person. I can't talk enough about him. And the last thing is let the outcome be the byproduct. The best performance often happens when you stop forcing the results. Yes, we we want this great outcome, but commit to the process. The outcome will take care of itself when the daily work is done consistently. Remember that consistency. And you're gonna have ups and downs, but it's all how you deal with it. I hope this has helped. Any questions, please feel free to reach out. And I wish uh you all the best.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

We're so glad you joined us for this episode of the Healthy Mindset App Podcast with your host, Mike Hartman. If you're enjoying the show, please feel free to rate, subscribe, and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcast. That helps others find the show, and we greatly appreciate it. To dive deeper and learn more about the Healthy Mindset program, or to get in touch with Mike, please visit our website, Healthymindsetapp.com. Thanks again for listening. And we hope you'll join us again in the next episode of the Healthy Mindset App Podcast. Until then, be well.