Hey, y’all!! I was listening to the Jocko Podcast on my way to work one morning, which gave me the idea for this post. The topic had to do with the Greek myth of Sisyphus. So pull up a chair and let’s talk Sisyphus.
Sisyphus was the founder and first king of Ephyra (today called Corinth)
I’m not gonna dive into the specifics of the myth (you can read it here if you’re interested), but the TL;DR is that Sisyphus pissed off Zeus because of his hubris. So the gods decided to punish this nerd by making him push a rock up a hill, only to have it roll back down to the bottom when he neared the top.
Seems like a pretty terrible way to spend eternity
As you’d probably expect, laborious and futile tasks are often referred to as Sisyphean. And Jocko received a question on his podcast about if he ever feels like he does things that are considered Sisyphean. And I found his response fascinating.
He said that he does feel like that sometimes, but that his “end goal isn’t the top of the hill. The goal is pushing the rock“.
Like, it sounded crazy to me at first. How could the end goal be the struggle, not the result? How could you come to LOVE that battle? But then I thought about it.
It’s about loving the process
I’m not talking about Joel Embiid, but rather “process thinking”, which was popularized by Alabama’s Nick Saban (roll tide). Basically, hard work and preparation, which tend to bring about desired outcomes and results, are more important than the results themselves. Said differently, every action a person takes in life affects the outcome of their life.
Which is extremely powerful for a couple of reasons. One, it reminds us that we can control our choices and that those choices matter. And two, it means we can do things that improve our chances of the desired outcome.
That comes with a caveat though.
We have to accept the outcome, whatever it may be
And that’s a tough pill to swallow sometimes. Because the thought is that if we make the right choices, we should get what we want. Which isn’t how life works. There’s a quote that goes “man makes plans, and God laughs”. Meaning that you can try and obtain certain outcomes, and everything can still go wrong.
But that doesn’t mean we should stop making plans, but rather that we should shift our focus from the top of the hill to pushing the rock. That way, no matter where the dice land, we can know we did everything we could. And we can embrace that failure, learn our lessons, and get back to getting after it.
I want to thank you for talking humans with me today. What’s your process? Let me know in the comments below. Don’t forget to subscribe and share. And don’t forget to talk humans with someone this week. Catch y’all next week! Peace!!