Often when our goal is objective, a good way to achieve it is to think in terms of “how.” How we’ll get the funds to finance our business, how we’ll convince our friends to take a group vacation, how we’ll shape our piece of walnut into a hand carved spoon.
Fortunately, not every problem is best solved with a “how” approach. Problems that involve being (or becoming) a certain type of person have more to do with “that” as opposed to “how.” When we decide to become a painter as opposed to someone who paints the only qualifier is whether or not we show up. It matters very little “what” or “how” we paint because the crux is found in that fact “that” we paint at all. The same goes for becoming a novelist, pilot, or Dungeon Master. Barring the requirement of accreditation or applying for licensure, If you’d like to be a certain type of person who does a certain type of thing, your chief concern is not “how” but “that.”
“That” is important because it creates ample room for individual contextualization. When we are a runner who runs in light of our personalized constraints and our chief concern is “that” we run at all, we become freed from stressing over “how” far or “what” courses. When we care more about the fact “that” we consistently show up, emulating someone else’s way of being or doing becomes merely a point of reference. In discovering when “that” is better than “how” we give ourselves the green-light to follow our paths regardless of how different they seem to appear.