Crave The Process

“Trust the process” and other such phrases you’ve probably heard or used. To crave the process, is to enjoy the nuts and bolts, the grind, the systematic actions taken toward a goal or as part of reaching that goal more than or as much as attaining the goal itself.

Sure, we want the goal, but we can’t always materialize the goal instantly. Smaller ones we can, but larger fulfilling ones, that truly drive change in our lives, usually take time. Frustration sets in when we haven’t reached the goal and don’t know how to reach it. Or don’t have a method to reach it and allow ourselves to enjoy the progress. There should be some innate human satisfaction related to goal progress. I can only at the moment describe the emotion people have when they aren’t making progress or aren’t reaching the goal/getting the thing fast enough as frustration.

This should come from or be related to the unknown of when the goal or result will be attained. This agin should be due to a lack of planning/structural thinking required to formally systemize the completion of the goal – come up with the steps to reach it. Impatience would add to or be based on this frustration from not seeing the result soon enough, or fueled by the pressure of the additional problem of needing the goal to be reached soon (bills, a debt, raising status in some other way). Apart from needing something to happen by a certain time frame (that’s another topic), impatience and frustration toward goal completion should be ameliorated by the knowledge that one is “doing all they can” as far as structuring time devoted to making progress, and seeing actual progress by measuring it consistently.

This is the psychological motivation behind the idea of ‘break down goals into smaller more realistic goals’. Mini-goals set with time limits whether during a day or across several days/weeks. So once this becomes automatic behavior and you start to see results from doing this, you can start craving the process. You will see that the process in itself IS the action you must be taking (based on your experience, research, best ideas for progression) and if you get lost in this process, you are in more of a flow state. Your goal is inherent within you, its on your mind, if subconsciously most of the time, especially since you wrote your goals down. This is what you unknowingly know you are working toward. Your actions are aligned/congruent with it, and you may forget the progress you are making (due to enjoying what you’re doing) until it shows itself to you or you measure it.

The best progress is such that manifests itself to you, without you having to check on it. A lucky break, a better result than you expected, some right mix of circumstances. This is also what is meant by the popular phrase “The harder I work, the luckier I get” (Samuel Goldwyn). (I try my best in this blog to avoid hackneyed or phrases most people have heard but sometimes it helps to connect my interpretation to something more popular in the lexicon).

So the reason one can love the process is due to the application of a decision-oriented system of rules, based on experience, that one has developed through constant practice, when applied toward a goal, especially with a timeline.

There is magic in this flow state (psychological and/or manifestational), better explained by authors I haven’t read yet, that, when combined with passion (possibly required to get to this state in the first place) has a higher tendency or probability of producing the results you actually seek. By not constantly checking results or feeling impatient or frustrated, you can enjoy the process and eventually crave it because you know what it means/does for you.

Doing something you enjoy while not knowing how to reach the goal can be enough to allow you to enjoy the process. Its harder when we both don’t know what to do or how to get there, but there’s always a place to start, then adjust and continue. This is why it is advised to generally “do something you’re passionate about” because you’ll be less likely to get frustrated/impatient and more likely to follow through, find the process-flow state often, and make progress or get somewhere even better you didn’t expect.

Please share any books, articles or thoughts you’ve found on this “process magic” to help me better understand why it works.