Don't Trust the Process

A New Life Perspective

Trusting the process actually means giving up on really trying to understand the existing system from a micro and macro perspective. You'll often hear people say trust the process. Without being too technical about it, a process is "a series of actions that you take to achieve a result." A process has a defined start and end, with intermediate tasks and activities together with controls and disturbances. Processes are put in place to prevent you from exercising your natural instincts in decision-making; it's part of the checks and balances. Processes bring bureaucracy even in enjoyable endeavours.

As said, people often like saying go through the process as a form of advice when someone is going through a difficult time that is somehow supposed to teach the particular individual a lesson. You know, one of those lessons you can learn only by going through something. Trust the process! I don't trust processes. I believe in adopting new routines that become part of my life, that is, lifestyle. So instead of the process-centric approach, which I find lacking, I adopted what I call the lifestyle-centric approach.

The lifestyle-centric approach says to achieve your goals and self-actualize, you need to adopt a new way of living, not for the short-term (time between process start and end) but for the long-term. The lifestyle-centric approach has much to do with knowing "why" you want to do something. How strong is your "why"? (On a side note, check out Simon Sinek). With a weak why, it becomes very difficult to sustain process-centric results. The process-centric approach to me is to some extant mindless suffering. Suffering is part of our existence as human beings (the being part is the suffering part because the only constant of life is change). We often derive meaning from suffering; hence our suffering must be meaningful.

Have you ever wondered about the following?

1. Why do people pay for gym memberships (App subscriptions) but never go to the gym or use the App?

2. Why the road is full of joggers and runners in January and empty by March?

3. Why do people use some weight loss formulations (e.g. Herbal life) and see some results but now are back to square zero?

4. Why do people say Ph-nishe-D after getting a PhD or other certificates?

The list above is just an example of the application of the process-centric approach. Smoking and drug abuse can also be great examples. Of course, there are other factors at play in this whole equation, but I attribute the process-centric mindset as a cause of these setbacks. For example, why do we struggle with our weight, although scientifically speaking, it's mass. Maybe going to the moon can make one feel better because 80kg on earth is equivalent to 13kg on the moon. 

The lifestyle-centric approach requires one to reduce the number of activities or routines that add no value and reduce the number of things that your mind wants to negotiate with your body. For me, jogging every second day is not negotiable. Whether it rains, cold, or hot, I hit the road. My body knows that this instruction is not negotiable. It's not even about the kilometres; it's about discipline. Which is roughly defined as consistently doing something you don't want to do. It's hard. No one can ever get used to pain. You'll relapse to your old ways if you let your guard down. If you negotiate wit the brain, it'll always find excuses for you not to do what needs to be done because it is painful.

Weak Whys mixed with group mentality throws one straight into a process-centric approach. It's the human way of living as social creatures. The future you requires that you adopt a new way of living, that is, routines under continuous improvement. The current you must be changed via process (mostly painful with sacrifices) to a new lifestyle you. There it is, process! it always comes up. That's why we tell people to trust the process. A lifestyle has processes in it, just like processes have activities, and activities have events.

In summary, a lifestyle is a choice and requires a strong why for it to be meaningful. 'He who has a why can bear with almost any how'.

A person to watch is David Goggins.