I got the following coaching in a previous question:

> The thought error is that you are not seeing that the $200K possible for staying at your job is not of your creation.
> The way you are thinking about it is like a C that you had no participation in creating.
> If the $200K is created in your R line via your job, it’s because of your model. Your thoughts and feeling led to actions creating that R.

As background, the $200K is referring to money I would receive when selling stock in my company. The stock is private, which means it’s usually not for sale, though there are sometimes sale events available.

The result in this particular case is that if I have an opportunity to sell my stock and I sell it, I’ll receive some money. That sale could be for $200k.

I’m having a hard time seeing how I might create that result myself since a lot of it is out of my control.

Here are the actions for that result that are in my control:
– continuing to work at this company so that I’m eligible to sell my stock
– selling my stock if/when the opportunity is available

Here are the factors that I think are outside of my control:
– the total money received. This is dependent the price of the share that’s going to be sold — it’s out of my control, I guess I could just not buy it at a given price if I didn’t like it, but then the result is $0.
– the total money received is also dependent on how much stock I’m going to be allowed to sell as part of the sale. this is not determined by me.
– the time at which the shares will be sold – whether next week, a month from now, next year, etc.
– whether or not the shares will be for sale at all (it’s for a private company, not a public stock).
– whether or not the shares will be for sale within the time I’m allowed to sell it – the agreement for that is 1.5 more years. So if it’s not for sale within 1.5 years, there is no opportunity to sell.
– the price of the stock for sale. this is determined by the people organizing the sale. If the company is ever public, it’ll be determined by the stock market overall.

It seems to me that the specific result of receiving $200k through the sale of the stock within a given time frame (e.g. a month, end of this year, within the maximum amount of time I can sell them of 1.5 years) isn’t up to me within the model since I can’t directly influence (using my actions) many things required for the sale to happen.

I am trying to make a decision on how long to stay for in order to get these stock options. Since it seems like most of it is not up to me (only staying & purchasing is up to me), I may not want to stay for up to 1.5 years. What I got from the coaching is that perhaps some of the limitations that I’ve outlined here are due to a thinking error, and they’re not actual limitations.

Would love to hear more thoughts on this subject of creating a result when some things that are required for it are outside of my control.