Process-Based Life vs Outcome Based Life: Self Application in the Real World

Outcome-Based Living vs Process-Based Living: The Core Shift

You hit the target and still feel flat. That gap is where this talk starts. Kaitlin Wilder opened by naming two ways to run a life. One is outcome based: you pick a result and grade yourself on it. The other is process based, which means you value the way the journey feels. In a process-based life, your stress and your well-being are part of the data. They are not a price you pay to reach the top.

This session was the self-application night of a longer week. Earlier sessions covered the concepts. This one asked people to apply them to their own lives. Wilder ran a clarity rating before and after the session. Then she handed the night over to journaling. There were four writing blocks with music playing. She shared her own patterns throughout to make each exercise concrete.

Her core claim is simple. How the climb feels is how the summit will feel.

Because we know how we feel along the. Journey is how we feel when we arrive. at our destination.

From the talk — Kaitlin Wilder

Experiential Attachment, Defined in Plain Terms

Experiential attachment (getting stuck on one outcome) was the review term for the night. Wilder kept the definition blunt. It means patterns of suffering (problems that repeat in daily life) that come from fixation on symbolic rewards (stand-ins for feeling good enough). The fix is not more attachment. It is noticing when you have narrowed down to one acceptable result.

She used a mountain to make this concrete. The mountain gets narrower as it rises. Attachment works the same way. The higher you climb toward one payoff, the fewer options stay in view. Let go of that single payoff and the options open back up.

For a practitioner, this is a probability problem, not a slogan. If only one result counts, most days will miss. Frustration follows, and so does the sense of being blocked from everything else.

focus on one outcome and one thing is all you are open to accepting then it is very mathematically unlike that you're going to get that thing because there's only one, right?

From the talk — Kaitlin Wilder

Patterns of Suffering: Finding Your Greatest Hits

The first journal prompt was concrete. List five patterns of suffering you noticed this week. Wilder gave five minutes and played music while people wrote. The goal was not deep insight. The goal was a list on paper.

Patterns repeat. Same pattern, different context. That repetition is the whole reason the exercise works.

She shared her own list to lower the bar for everyone else. Perfectionism sat at the top. Then came thoughts about running out of time. Then overworking, needing to go faster, and feeling not good enough without finished work. Most problems, she said, boil down to a few distinct patterns.

That can land as overwhelming. Wilder offered a second reading: it might be freedom instead. A short list is a workable list. The hard part is the noticing, not the fixing.

That's why I like to refer to them as your greatest hits album because you'll notice that you see kind of this Same things over and over.

From the talk — Kaitlin Wilder

Symbolic Rewards and the Pull of External Validation

Symbolic rewards are the payoffs that stand in for worth. Wilder named several from her own history. Good outcomes for clients. Approval from other people. Making others happy. None of these are bad on their own. The trouble starts when they become your proof that you are okay.

She drew a line between two versions of this pattern. She said she has never been much of a people pleaser. She called herself an over-helper instead. The over-helper abandons themselves in favor of helping. From the outside it looks generous. It still costs the same thing.

There is a function worth naming here. Pouring yourself into other people lets you skip what is happening inside you. Wilder also touched on codependency (depending on something to meet a need). Her answer was not more independence. It was interdependence: independent, but still together.

This applies directly to clinical work. Client progress is one of the symbolic rewards Wilder named. Approval from others is another. Both are easy to turn into evidence about your value as a person.

A people pleaser will will abandon themselves.

From the talk — Kaitlin Wilder

The Mind Movie: Tracing a Pattern to Its First Appearance

Where do these patterns come from? Wilder's answer was experience. We watch our families, we learn what normal looks like, and we build habits of thinking and feeling. Over time that becomes an inner voice. She noted that Steve Hayes calls this the dictator within. For some people it is loud and chatty. For others it is a brick wall or a freeze. Wilder's guess about the freeze was avoidance and fear doing protective work.

The exercise was direct. Pick your number one greatest hit. Then remember the first time you felt that thought or feeling. Write the mind movie: whatever memory, image, or scene shows up. Many people land somewhere in childhood.

Wilder told her own story. Academics carried a lot of weight in her home. As a young kid she wrote a school report by hand, over and over, because one mistake meant starting the page again. She handed it to a parent. He found a misspelled word and never read the rest.

She was careful about blame. The adult was doing what he thought would help her succeed. Her mind took the lesson literally and built rules about precision. A pro tip came with the prompt too. If your mind answers I don't know, notice that. Wilder named that as her own top avoidance move: avoiding uncertainty, failure, and getting it wrong. Two shorter prompts followed. Describe the climb that came after that first memory. Then ask your mind what the hard climb means about you.

Go fix it. Go fix it. So I did. For the rest of my life.

From the talk — Kaitlin Wilder

How to Use the Noticing Log in Daily Practice

The night ended with a tool. The noticing log (a daily record of what you noticed) sits in the week's materials. Wilder framed it as data collection on yourself, run every day.

The format will look familiar to a behavior analyst. It runs close to ABC data (antecedent, behavior, and consequence), in a different outfit. Column one is the observed behavior: something outside you, like another person's action or an event. Column two is your thought or feeling. Column three is your response. Column four is the new part: did I model what I wanted?

That last column is a values check. Were you the person you want to be in that moment? Yes, no, maybe, or a little of each all count as answers. You do not have to describe everything. Write what is actually useful to you.

Missed days are built into the design. Forgot until the next morning? Log it then. Only remember part of the thought? Log that part. An approximate time is fine. Forgetting is itself one more thing to notice.

You know we gotta have some data.

From the talk — Kaitlin Wilder

Celebrate Noticings Instead of Shaming the Problem

One line carries the logic of the whole system.

Most self-monitoring (tracking your own behavior) aims at problem reduction. You count the slip-ups and hope the number drops. Wilder flips the target. You count the moments you caught something instead.

The reasoning holds up under a behavioral lens. A log that punishes you is a log you stop filling out. A log that celebrates noticing makes more noticing likely. Noticing is also the only point where a pattern can bend. Wilder described changing a pattern this way: noticing a moment where you used to feel one thing. Then choosing to feel something else. Even wanting to feel that way counts as progress.

We celebrate Noticings as opposed to shaming our ourselves to reduce the problem.

From the talk — Kaitlin Wilder

Why Self-Application Comes Before Client Application

Someone in the chat said they were surprised by how much they had learned about themselves in one evening. Wilder's response explains why she spends a whole session on journaling.

The closing exercise was experiential and openly soft. Eyes closed, music on, picture your young self. Notice what they look like and what they are doing. Then open your arms and invite that little human in. Hug them hard. Tell them exactly what they needed to hear back then.

Wilder modeled her own out loud. Her grown-up self would tell that kid the report was incredible. She would say it looked like the work paid off. That child did not get those words at the time. She can give them now and feel the way she wanted to feel then.

The homework ties this back to practice. Keep the noticing log going each day. Update your opening paperwork as new material comes up. Revisit your ideal life exercise and see whether anything reads differently. The next session covers the judgments, assumptions, and rules under these patterns, and how to start undoing those networks.

It's not that we didn't know. Just we didn't ask.

From the talk — Kaitlin Wilder