Last week I wrote a post where I talked about my love for Autumn and how this season shows people how beautiful it can be to let go of things. As a New Englander, I will always smile at the bright hues of the leaves falling and be energized by their smell.
For me, there are two feelings that this quote invokes. One, I think of how the four seasons in a year is a metaphor in one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. He equates it to the stages in a man’s life. Autumn in this case would be a man entering his middle years. Even though the seasons are cyclical, in Shakespeare’s sonnet, the man’s life is linear.
Two, I love the idea of this quote meaning that we should trust the process. Everything in our life, like the four seasons, is cyclical. Don’t grasp so tightly on things that you are meant to shed to get to the next chapter of your life. Trust the process that what you lose, will come back to you if it is meant to. The trees trust that the leaves will come back and be beautiful again. They don’t have to fret about not having them again. They trust and believe in their cyclical process.
What is Trusting the Process?
Trusting the process means to let go of trying to control everything and having faith that everything will work out okay in the end. It means remaining committed to something even if things aren’t working the way you want them to and you feel like quitting. It’s not an easy thing to do, either. Our brains are wired to expect to see results quickly.
3 Ways to Trust the Process
Here are three ways you can begin to use to trust the process.
1. Focus on what you can control. One, there are few things in life we have complete control over. And two, even when we seem to do everything right, other circumstances may wreak havoc on our plans. I’ve seen this with weight loss. I can eat healthy, exercise, get good sleep and hydrate well and still hit a speed bump. It’s so frustrating! And it’s easy to become discouraged and I have been on many occasions. But when you trust the process and keep going, you will make progress – it just might not be as immediate as you’d like it to be.
2. Understand that failure is just experience. I always say this and it is true. While you are trying to achieve anything in life, you are going to have some failure. And that is okay! It is a necessary part to the process. Failure teaches us more than success ever will. I often say, if you aren’t failing, you aren’t really trying.
3. Enjoy the process. As humans, we often proclaim that we will be so happy when X happens. And X can be when I lose 20 pounds, when I have X amount of money saved in the bank, when I meet my future spouse, etc. When we do that, we miss out on experiencing and appreciating where we are in the present. Trusting the process can feel scary at first…But remember, difficult roads lead to beautiful destinations.
