Practice fierce trust by divorcing effort from outcomes

You light a candle on your desk and read your pledge: “I will show up for my inputs, not my outcomes.” The room is quiet except for a neighbor’s dog and the low hum of the fridge. You open a blank document and type until the timer chimes, then mark a small X on the calendar. No one claps. You feel oddly relieved.

Midweek, the itch to check reactions spikes. You catch yourself reaching for the stats tab and close it. You make tea. You tell yourself the outcomes will come when they come, but the work needs you now. A small anecdote: a painter committed to three morning sessions and one share a week. A month later, nothing in the outside world had changed, but she’d made twelve pieces and felt more grounded than she had in years.

On the last day of the month, you skim your notes. You learned that an hour before lunch is golden, that jazz helps and podcasts don’t, that you love line work more than color. You set a new input for next month: four sessions, shorter but more focused. Maybe outcomes will arrive later; maybe they won’t. You might be wrong, but it seems like trusting the practice is the only way to make something you respect.

Psychologically, this is expectancy-value-cost in action: you raise expectancy (I can do the inputs), lower costs (reduced metric anxiety), and reconnect value (work feels meaningful). Focusing on controllable behaviors builds self-efficacy. Regular sharing provides exposure therapy that softens the sting of indifference or critique. Over time, process-first living turns creativity from a slot machine into a stable practice. Outcomes matter, but they can’t be in charge.

Write a simple input pledge you can keep—words per day, sessions per week—and post it near your workspace. Pick a share cadence and honor it even when applause is quiet. For 30 days, hide or ignore metrics so you can hear your own learning. At month’s end, review what energized you and tweak your inputs, not your identity. Keep the candle, keep the Xs, and keep going. Begin your pledge at your next session.