Trust the process
It’s a phrase I’ve never heard before… up until my night of restless sleep and heartache, which jolted my soul into a frenzy. Akin to a spiritual nudge reminiscent of Elizabeth Gilbert’s plea at the beginning of her Eat, Pray, Love journey, my nudge came after asking my ceiling fan and the aforementioned angels, for guidance.
Trust the process were the words that floated in my sub conscience.
Trust the process? What the fuck does that mean?
I wiped my tears away and immediately grabbed my phone to explore Google.
Popularized as a winning mantra for the Philadelphia 76ers, trust the process became a new motto for when the going gets tough, the tough get going. A rallying cry for the flailing team, general manager Sam Hinkie advocated the importance of the process by trading in top talent for less desirable players, giving up short-term wins in favor of long term gains.
“It’s about faith and patience” motivational speaker Trent Shelton shares with his viewers. Like planting a seed and waiting for it to sprout, you can’t expect a flower to grow overnight, and the same is true for our individual growth. Just because it hasn’t bloomed yet, doesn’t mean it isn’t taking the necessary steps underneath the soil.
And that’s exactly the strategy Sam Hinkie used when he drafted Joel Embid in 2014. Suffering an injury, Embid would not be able to play in the NBA until 2016. And yet echoed Hinkie’s sentiment of trusting the process to eager fans, a signal that they like Embid would have to wait for the payoff.
Well I’m sorry to burst the motivational Google search, but the process fucking sucks!
Failure after failure. Pain after pain.
Am I dumb? Am I too sensitive? Am I naiive?
I can’t do this. Maybe it is time to give up.
“You learn nothing from success. You learn everything from the failures,” Ed Sheeran says as I open my LinkedIn app.
“Exactly!!” I yell in my head as I watch the Howard Stern clip, while tears and snot stream down my face.
“This is the thing that annoys me about the state that the world is in at the moment. No one talks about failure anymore. Its shame. Failure is shame. Its like ‘oh let’s bury that and not talk about it.’ No one goes ‘oh what do we learn from this?’ Whereas success everyone shouts about it. But there’s nothing in success. Success happens from failing hundreds of times.”
Ed Sheeran
Albert Einstein certainly didn’t come up with his theory of relativity in one go. In fact it took him ten years before he published his theory! It was through his sheer curiosity and imagination that gifted him the source of revelation and insight.
If my silver haired German stallion can do it, so can I.
In Carol S. Dweck’s Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, the Stanford University psychologist breaks down the idea of how our mindset can dramatically influence how we think about our talents and abilities. People with a fixed mindset believe that abilities are innate and unchangeable; that failures and setbacks are a direct reflection of one’s identity. For example, I failed at math equates to I am a failure. This leads to a full stop on one’s potential.
However, people who adopt the growth mindset believe their abilities can be developed through concerted effort, effective strategies and sheer curiosity, viewing the same set of challenges and setbacks as a positive framework for moving forward. For example, I failed at math and thats ok. Maybe this is telling me that I’m more of a creative thinker than an analytical one. Or I could get a tutor and reframe the numbers into a story!
The correlation with the growth mindset and success is in urging oneself to become a student of life. Learning is the goal, not the achievement.
Even Alfred Binet, the inventor of the IQ test recognized that it’s not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest. Nurturing the mind through curiosity and discomfort is the path that leads to intellectual and spiritual growth.
I throw my moist tissues into the garbage and open my laptop to write:
I am not dumb. I am not a failure.
Failure is feedback and feedback is knowledge.
The PROCESS is helping shape my character. It’s giving me strength, it’s giving me resilience, and it’s giving me insight. Not to mention making my clit into steel (metaphorically speaking of course).
What can I learn from this?
Whatever I am doing is not working, and I have to try a different strategy.
And to quote an Albert Einstein meme: “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Trust the Process.
Hot Minds Messy Hearts 
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