It is important to remember that you are in…
It is important to remember that you are in control of the process, you are not in control of the achievement. Therefore your goals should be written and understood in a way that says that these are the processes that you are going to do so that you don't get caught up in failure if you do not achieve the actual goal. For example, if you set a goal to make other people happy, and they are not happy, you will think that you have failed even though you have done your part about trying to make them happy. Where is, if your goal is to do things to try to make people happy, then you will be successful after you have done those things irrespective whether that person is happy or not.
— from Goals, Action & Defining Success (Goal/Action/Success/Motivation)
In the book
But here is the reframe that has saved me more disappointment than any other, and I want you to hold it tightly: you control the process, not the achievement. You command your actions; you do not command the outcome. So write your goals as the processes you will perform, not the results you cannot guarantee — because if your goal is "make this person happy" and they are not, you will feel like a failure though you did everything right, whereas if your goal is "do the things that tend to make people happy," you have succeeded the moment you do them. Build this into a system — a repeatable process for predictably reaching the goal — and make sure the system actually serves your big-picture aim rather than some smaller one. […] Pick the right stadiums. Choose which arenas matter to you and don't measure yourself against people excellent at what you don't value. Set goals that pull you. Make them specific and powerful, begin with the end in mind, and write them as processes you control rather than outcomes you can't. Build a system and prioritize to one thing. Make the system serve the big-picture goal, and narrow your aims to the single most important. […] Two practical truths I have staked my life on. The first: you control the process, never the outcome — so pour everything into doing your part well, and then make peace with whatever results, because a decision made and an effort given in the right spirit is a success even when the world calls it otherwise. The second, and it is the engine under all my own success: listen. The deals I closed, the life I built, came less from being clever than from paying attention to what other people actually wanted and finding a way to get there together. — Goals, Action & Defining Success (Goal/Action/Success/Motivation)