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I want to say at the outset just how much I struggled with the idea of outcome independence! You see I was a master at monitoring my pain. It was the first thought I had when I woke in the morning and I had a running commentary in my internal monologue about the pain. When I first read Alan's article about a year ago, it made a lot of sense. But I had a really hard time imagining how you could not think about the pain when you are in pain. It just seemed like an unachievable mountain to climb. So how did I do it? Answering that question is like answering how did you fall asleep last night? Have you ever been in bed knowing that you really need to fall asleep soon or you'll be miserable the next day and the more you think about it, the harder it is? Its kind of like that with pain, the more you monitor it, analyze it, think about it, compare it to how it felt yesterday etc. the more likely it is to stay. I know some people scream at it and I tried that plenty of times, but that didn't make my pain go away. I just tried to become aware of when I was thinking about and monitoring my pain and then redirect my thoughts. Its easiest to redirect your thoughts with something you really enjoy. I like to play on the Lumiosity web site and there was one game in particular in which you have to switch train tracks to get multiple trains in stations. It takes a lot of focus to play well, to get in the zone. So when I noticed I was obsessing about my pain, I would get on there and play. I can't tell you how many hours I played that game! I would just try to distract myself as much as possible with things I enjoy and try not to think about how much more I would enjoy them if the pain was gone. I would say to myself "oh, your monitoring, stop that." And somehow, for the most part, I have stopped thinking about the pain all the time. I can't tell you the day I stopped thinking about and monitoring the pain all the time. I do remember that there was a day though when I thought, "you know, if I am never painfree, it will be okay, I can still live a good life." Prior to working on the outcome independence I felt much more desperate about it, I would think "how am I going to live with this pain?" Its true that I have much less pain now and so outcome independence is a whole lot easier. But it is also true that I have much less pain because I worked on outcome independence. Choo choo.