Are You More Interested In Your Income Or Your Outcome?

10 MINUTES TO LESS SUFFERING

Host Alison Karman explores the philosophical distinction between 'income'—the internal inputs we control like thoughts, nutrition, and habits—and

Key takeaways

Income represents the things we choose to feed ourselves with, such as thoughts, relationships, food, and movement.
Focusing too heavily on outcomes can lead to loss of self, stress, and a lack of creativity.

Main topics

Income vs. Outcome
Mindfulness and Presence

Notable quotes

You should be more interested in your income than the outcome.

Conclusion

By focusing on what we can control and nourish, we can find freedom in

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:11) Hello, my name is Alison Karman, and welcome to my podcast, 10 Minutes to Less Suffering. And the name of today's podcast is, Are You More Interested in Your Income or Your Outcome? And I'd like to say this idea came to me when I was reading Eastern philosophy from thousands of years ago. But the truth is, I was watching this series called Reacher on Prime Video. And it was just this simple scene between two police officers. But when I heard that saying, you should be more interested in your income than the outcome, it really struck a chord. And even though they were actually talking about salary versus the results of your job, I took it in a more spiritual way. Because I know in my life, when I become too outcome-oriented, I lose a sense of myself. I lose a sense of who I am and what I really want from my life. And so when I think of the word income, does it include money? Does it include our salary? Yes, but it includes so many things. It includes the thoughts towards myself, what I'm willing to expose myself to in another relationship, what I'm eating, how I'm living, if I'm moving my body, how's my perspective? All these things are income. They allow me to elevate, to be enriched, to be balanced. And when I focus more on the other side, the result. Did my efforts lead to achievement? Is the person I did the favor for, the project for, are they happy? I lose my balance because I'm over-focusing on the part I can't control. So we could say the income is the stuff we control or we choose to feed ourselves with. We use them as our resources to nurture ourselves. And the outcome is the result of our efforts, the results of what we chose to do. And sometimes the outcome was fully out of our control. And so do we work towards good outcomes, pleasurable outcomes, things we dream of? Of course we do. There's nothing wrong with that. But when we base our lives fully on the outcome, We're always stressed. We're always worried. No matter what happens in the outside world, in the outcome, sometimes even with a good result, we're depleted. We've compromised ourselves. And even if the income monetarily was good, there's so much less of who we are or what we need to live a fundamentally meaningful life. And I also find that when I focus more on the income, I have better outcomes. There's something about approaching