One of the three obstacles to speaking truth is fear of consequences—treating each decision as a single, all-or-nothing bet. Joe reframes: decisions are a portfolio. Some will produce good results, some won’t. What matters is the overall portfolio, not any single outcome.
His daughter’s experience illustrates this: some things she said while being self-possessed didn’t go well, someone got upset—but the overall portfolio was solid. Her social life transformed.
Joe challenges the common reasoning of “I made a bad decision because the results weren’t good”: “Put yourself at a different company with a different boss and that decision would have been great.” Judging decisions by outcomes is just another way of holding yourself responsible for predicting the future—which, as any investor knows, is a losing strategy.
“Most people are thinking about a decision as a single decision… instead of seeing it as a portfolio of decisions.”
The shift is from outcomes to process: be grounded, be openhearted, speak what’s true. Do that consistently, and “the world will move itself to meet me.”