Decrease Importance, Increase Success
How lowering your attachment to outcomes brings them closer to you
A few months ago I was scrolling Instagram and came across a book list one of my favorite creators had compiled.
It contained a title that piqued my interest. Reality Transurfing by Vadim Zeland. While this book is a long intricate work based on the idea of manifesting your desired reality, it held one concept that I felt was too crucial to not write about.
That concept is “decreasing importance”. Now this concept is similar to Eastern concepts of detachment, but it was expressed in a way that I feel my audience will appreciate.
The idea is that by decreasing the importance attributed to an outcome, we increase the likelihood of achieving said outcome.
When we place an over-importance on ascertaining a certain outcome we also amplify anxiety, cling harder to dogmas, and allow excessive emotional baggage to hinder our personal growth and keep us from our desired goal.
To some, this may seem like a no-brainer, but to me, it was as profound as gospel. I had spent so much of my life pushing, redlining, and white-knuckling toward my goals that I constantly burned myself out or worried myself into complete inaction.
If you’ve read part one of my series about self-sabotaging you know that impediments to our goals arise during moments of empowerment. Right when you create an internal or external commitment to empowering yourself or others, the saboteur arises. Well, when you attribute too much importance to achieving a desired outcome your inner Saboteur engages at a much higher level.
Also, the anxiety and emotional baggage that arises during this period of obsessiveness will keep you too rigid to adapt to the natural flow of things. This in turn leads you to miss opportunities, signs to pivot, and even misinterpret signs of burgeoning success.
So how do you practice “decreasing importance” and when is it necessary?
I find it most necessary to manage attributed importance when you have committed to a goal that has finite outcomes. Such as setting a goal to book x amount of clients, setting out to lose x amount of pounds, or landing your dream job at a prestigious company.
Whenever you find that your goal has real-world stakes or is linked to a desired lifelong achievement, then managing attachment becomes critical. Anything you set your intent toward creates potential energy in the universe. It then offsets the “balance” of the established energies at play. The greater the importance attributed to your goal, the greater the counterbalance measures will be as a result.
(This of course is an insanely condensed version of the concept, in a book that nears 700 pages. I highly recommend checking out the book here or the free audiobook here)
When you set about decreasing attributed importance, it is not merely feigning apathy at a goal that is intrinsically important to you. But more so managing your attachment to the outcome. You can “decrease importance” by incorporating some form of the following methods:
Play the Infinite Game: Understand that there are finite games in life, with fixed rulesets and hard ending points. But there are also Infinite Games, ones where the goal isn’t to reach the destination per se but to keep the journeying and traveling going. Understand that the goals we set are not always the end destination, but a checkpoint in the larger realm of the infinite game. Adopting this mindset will automatically decrease the importance of any goal, as we will treat it as a marker of progress.
Practice Gratitude: One of the main reasons we create so much excess potential energy around our goals is because we convince ourselves that only through this achievement will we find fulfillment. We then ignore the multitude of fulfilling things in our lives and desperately cling to a feeling that has yet to come. By practicing gratitude, we raise ourselves both emotionally and energetically by appreciating how far we have already come and those we have around us. This in turn balances the pedestals that we have placed external things around us.
Become the Watcher: This is a common phrase used in most meditation practices, but it is one of the most powerful techniques used in self-reflection, building emotional literacy, and of course, decreasing importance. Whether through guided meditation, breathwork, or strolls through nature, suspend judgment on emotions and thought processes and just observe. Observe the language, emotions, and thought patterns surrounding your goal. Do you notice anxiety or worry? What kinds of things is your ego saying? Once you have observed your own mind, give yourself permission to let go. Allow the negativity, stress, and anxiety to dissipate from your being.
Accept Alternatives: The most freeing and terrifying piece of information is understanding freedom of choice. There are infinite paths to success and know that you can take any one of them. Often we become so dug in on the idea that we have to do this thing this way to get that result. This is simply not true. As you progress towards your desired outcome be open to new paths that unfold. You should even be open to evolving your goal to something more holistic as you begin to get a more accurate view of the landscape.
This list is far from exhaustive and I’m sure there are far more modalities yet to be explored. When considering any technique or modality to practice decreasing importance, ones that focus on presence and perspective will usually get the job done.
In the end, our actual aim here is building trust in ourselves and lowering dependency on external factors to bring us fulfillment. Sure I could have posted the previous sentence by itself but sometimes simple concepts are the hardest to grasp.
When you have incorporated the techniques, you should find that your overall performance anxiety will decrease dramatically. Your fulfillment with your work will be more balanced and felt throughout the process. And you should find achieving your aims easier and with less friction.
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I loved this article! Really great informative piece that took me some time to get around to myself - surrounding less energy and importance on the things I want most and putting it out there in the universe.
I hope you can cover the law of attraction next and diving deeper into manifestation and the power of the tongue and evil eye🙈🤩