What nobody told me about trusting the process.

I used to think feeling unsure meant I was screwing up.

Every time doubt started to creep in, I got deathly afraid that it was the universe’s way of flashing a big red “Wrong Way” sign at me. (Not that I have any reason to think the universe would be that helpful, given the number of mistakes it’s let me make without any warning.)

But after years of pushing through that feeling, I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think doubt and failure are directly correlated at all.

Doubt is just part of the process. “The Process.” WoooOOOooo. “Trust the process,” people say. But no one ever really says how. So let’s talk about that.

In my experience - and please, reply to this and tell me if yours is different - doubt is just the friction that comes from doing something new, pushing myself in a direction that doesn’t have a clear path made yet. Every big thing I’ve ever worked on has been full of moments where I doubted myself. Most of the small things, too.

Apparently most if not all people who are successful at anything feel this way too. They still keep going. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have any idea who they are.

There’s a pervasive belief that if you’re doubting yourself, it’s because you’re doing something wrong, as if you need to feel confident every step of the way or the thing you’re working on is ultimately doomed. But it turns out, you can have doubts while you’re doing the work and it doesn’t disqualify you from doing the work right.

Thinking back over my very haphazardly self-made career as a writer, I’ve doubted myself almost every step of the way while doing work I am genuinely proud of now. In other words, in everything I’ve ever done that got me to where I am now, doubt didn’t get the final say… I did.

Doing the work is the only proof you need that you’re trusting the process.

Turns out, trusting the process isn’t an abstract notion. Or at least it doesn’t have to be. It’s not about blind faith, or unshakable confidence, or feeling “zen” about every step you take. Trusting the process just means doing the work, even when you’re unsure, even when it feels like nothing is going to happen… even when nothing has happened for an uncomfortable amount of time.

I’ve wondered many, many times if the hours spent writing, planning, thinking, are worth the extreme discomfort that often comes with them. It’s easy for me to start questioning if I’m moving in the right direction or not when I haven’t finished the work, don’t know how it’s going to turn out, and can’t see the end result yet. But the real trust in the process, for me, is in doing. When I need proof that I trust the process, I look at the work I’m putting in. That’s the proof. Trust is built on action, not on talking myself into believing everything’s going to work out no matter what I do.

Some stuff won’t work out. Some stuff will. But I trust myself to examine what I did. I trust myself to figure out what parts did or didn’t work out and why, and to remember those things next time. I trust myself to look for the reason why a thing I made is good enough for now, and I trust myself to appreciate a thing not just for what I accomplished by making it, but also for the role it played in making me better.

With every thing I make, I learn enough to adjust, tweak, control some new aspect of that thing, and things more broadly. That means “the process” isn’t about just getting better, it’s about getting different, diverse, experienced, in-depth, curious. It’s about learning to approach things in ways you couldn’t have imagined before you approached it the first way. Finishing something, even if it’s messy, gives you the perspective to say, "I can do this differently next time." And honestly? That’s the only thing you can truly control.

After all of the years of self-doubt, and overwork, and burnout where I've still managed to get plenty done, it's my own process that has finally taught me that "the process” people talk about trusting so much is not a philosophy I failed to wrap my head around. Nor is it something I need to have unshakable confidence in. Nor is it something I really need to pay attention to at all.

It’s just me, making things, and noticing what parts of it I might be able to do in other ways, as I go or after the fact. It’s just me, tinkering. I’m good at tinkering. I can trust myself to do that. I bet you can too. So why don’tcha?