Trust the process.

I see it on my timeline at least once a day. I hear it at least three times a day. Ace Hood even just released an album titled “Trust The Process”.

As much as I've heard it said, no one has ever taken the time to explain it to me. When I first heard the phrase the following questions immediately pooped into my head: Does it mean to keep going no matter what? Does it mean that life has a way of working everything out? What is the process? And who and why do I need to trust it?

Process is a weird word to define. It's often used to describe the ins and out of a particular process. My only issue with the phrase is that it doesn't account for the reality that the same method applied in someone else's life doesn't generate duplicate results in yours. In my opinion, it might be better to recite " Trust Your Process" rather than "Trust the Process".

I say this because it's incredibly far more easier to trust in a method or process rather than yourself. Trusting yourself is more difficult because you can’t escape you. Many of us will find ourselves downplaying our strengths and amplifying our weaknesses rather than pushing to work on both of these areas of our lives. I often wonder if this is because we see ourselves all the time and rather than enamoring ourselves we tolerate our selves.

For some odd reason, we've been conditioned to think that by believing in ourselves and our innate capabilities we're somehow arrogant. And while it's no one in particular's fault for why we do this, individually we owe it to ourselves to start.

Trusting our process isn’t about developing a god complex or believing we lack the ability to make a mistake. Trusting the process is about maintaining a healthy sense of self-worth alongside a healthy level of productivity. The key is having both of these independent of the other.

We shouldn’t lose faith in ourselves just because we screw up or make a mistake because we are ultimately the same individual at our highs and lows and we are simply trying to do our best with the resources we have in the moment.

While the culture as a whole may normalize self-deprecating jokes through memes I would be remiss if I didn’t point out how what we consume and read we believe and become. The jokes and memes are hilarious and completely as long as we don’t internalize these messages.

We have to trust ourselves and remain faithful to ourselves because if we aren’t no one else will.