“Life is not what it’s supposed to be—it’s what it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.” ― Virginia Satir
For the last few days the phrase “trust the process” has appeared with such frequency I can’t ignore it. Maybe it’s the message we all need right now.
There’s a process for pretty much everything in life — birth, death and grief are all a process, healing is a process, learning a new skill is a process, parenting is a process, renovating a house is a process. What do all these things have in common? They all take time.
Take healing, for example. It takes less than a second to sprain an ankle, but days or weeks for that sprain to resolve. The grief process can take years, and if you skip steps it’s like playing Chutes & Ladders… you end up right back where you started, at square 1. Have you ever embarked on a closet cleaning adventure, only to find yourself an hour or two in with a bigger, more overwhelming mess than the one you started with? Tempting as it is, you can’t just run away from the mess you’ve created, you have to go through THE PROCESS. Sorting, organizing, tossing, reorganizing, reframing. It feels interminable right up until it’s done.
It feels like we’re in a “trust the process” season in so many areas right now. For those of us who dislike uncertainty, avoid risk-taking, suffer from a bad case of impatience, and really like to check things off the to-do list, trusting the process can be deeply uncomfortable. Are there ways to make it less painful?
Keep the faith. Every process has a vision of success or completion at its end. Hold on to that. Whether you’re recovering from surgery or in the middle of a kitchen remodel, keep the end in mind. (This step is especially hard when you can’t envision the end of the journey because you’ve never been here before. Find something to focus on, even if it’s baby steps of progress.)
You can’t process what is out of your control. Basically, the only thing we can control is ourselves. Irritating, but true. You can change your mind, your attitude, and your actions. No one else can do that for you. I go back to Viktor Frankl’s quote from “Man’s Search for Meaning,” written about his experiences in a German concentration camp in WWII: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Changing your own attitude might not seem like taking action, but your shift in perspective or energetic focus might just be the tipping point for the change you’re waiting on.
Do the next right thing. Whatever that may look like for you right now. That may mean taking a mental health break, or following doctor’s orders instead of doing things your way, or just doing a small task that is within your power, like washing the dishes or going for a walk.
The process goes on regardless. We get to decide whether we let it fill us with faith or doubt, whether it makes us miserable or we choose peace.