A Spell for Trusting the Process

Life is full of twists and turns and co-creative mystery. There is no foolproof plan or ironclad strategy that can change that.

What if we tried instead to trust in the process of making, in co-creation with everyone and everything?

Collecting the wisdom our experiences yield, orienting toward what feels good,

what aligns with our values, what is lighting us up Right Now?

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Mentioned:

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Elizabeth Strout https://www.elizabethstrout.com/

timewitchery.com/planner, where you can get support for trusting the process with a Time Witchery planner of your own.

Make Magic:

To trust the process requires us to be fully in the process.

That means focusing on the present, and what we’re making happen right now.

There is no one right way, and there is also no wrong way.

Mistakes are not a thing. Every experience that we have, that we make,

reveals another invaluable piece of the puzzle.

Transcript: A Spell for Trusting the Process

Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here. 

Hello, my love. I am here today with a new spell for you. But I have to start by saying, to be honest, I really wasn't sure what to call this one, so I'm calling it a spell for trusting the process. But I want to begin by telling you what I mean by that. 

For me, when I become interested in the process, I am less fixated on the product. When I'm interested in how I am being in the world, how I am making things happen, I am less interested in the result that I'm hoping that the process will yield. And this is countercultural because we have a product-obsessed culture. [laugh] 

Our culture is fixated on outcomes and results and the yield. And in that, there's almost this pretending that we are capable of controlling the outcome; that somehow if we make all the right choices, somehow if we do all the correct things, somehow if we are really shrewd and savvy and strategic that our process will yield a successful result, a successful product. And I don't know if you have noticed this in this life, but that is not how it works. [laugh] Like, the longer I am here on this planet, the more I realize how much I cannot control, and how many variables there are, how many co-creators there are in this life.

I don't, you don't, none of us do exist in a vacuum where we know what's going to happen when we make a certain choice or decision. As we are here making our choices and decisions, so are everyone else making their choices and decisions. Oh, and P.S., there's weather, and there are economies, local and global, and there are, as we know now so well, illnesses. There are accidents, happy and otherwise, right? There are just so many co-creators, so many variables.

Of course, we can't control the outcome, and yet [laugh] our culture cruelly suggests that if we're smart and if we're good and if we make the right decisions that somehow that will yield the right result. So today when I talk about trusting the process, really what I mean is how can we more confidently, more serenely, more gracefully be in process, like, be working on creating things, trying to create our abundant lives, trying to create our impact, trying to create our happy homes, trying to create our work in the world, right? 

How do we be in the process of that when we are also co-creating with so much unknown? That's kind of what today is about, trusting the process. So, of course, because [laugh] this is how the universe works, as I was simmering this spell in the back of my mind, I was also reading a novel by Elizabeth Strout, and she had this beautiful quotation in the novel that goes like this. 

"Maybe the meaning of life is to bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can. Like, maybe what we're doing here is bearing the burden of the mystery, that is, being with the truth that we are all always co-creating with so many variables that we really truly never know what is going to happen, that there is not one surefire strategy for succeeding. There just isn't. How do we bear that burden with as much grace as we can?" 

Isn't that a fabulous quotation? Oh, my gosh. It's actually in more than one Elizabeth Strout book, so just read all her stuff because it's great to read. And I'll add to this a little bit. I don't think it's just about bearing the burden of the mystery with grace, but also being fully in our capacity to co-create this life. 

As you have heard me say a million times, I believe we all exist at choice, and maybe our most sacred, most fantastic, most human power is to choose. And so, yeah, I never know what's going to happen, and no, I never get to choose what happens next. But I do still have the power to choose, and I have the power to create, and so this spell about trusting the process is about how do I fully channel that creative capacity that I have to make my contribution to this life?

Here we are. We're all co-creating, and so how do I co-create on purpose? How do I do what I think will make the world better? How do I do what will give my life meaning? What will bring joy to where I stand on this planet, this floating, orbiting ball of water and rock? 

Like, this whole thing is a miracle, and so I want to be here fully. How do I do that? How do I make choices confidently when I also know that I have no idea what's going to happen. And I think, for me anyway, the way I do that is I trust more and more the process. I let go of my idea of the product, and I trust the process. I fully participate in the process.

I remember that I am always co-creating, so I don't take it all upon myself to try to figure out every step toward the outcome I want because I understand that all of those steps get taken one at a time. I understand that all of those steps are happening within co-creation with all these other entities. I don't apply pressure to myself to create a specific outcome. I just try as best I can to fully immerse in the process, right? 

So I was trying to think of a nice little example of what I mean by this, and here's what came to mind. Let's say that what you want to do is open up a little coffee shop. You love coffee shops. You see coffee shops as being a place that brings light and pleasure and connection within a community. And you know what? You're going for it. You want to open up a coffee shop.

So, what's going to happen? Who knows? There are so many co-creators. It may be that you open up your little coffee shop, and then a Starbucks opens up around the corner, and you don't make it against that behemoth. Or it may be that, as happened to this little café in California, Harry Styles writes a song, and puts a lyric in it about your coffee shop, and all of a sudden your coffee shop is like the hottest place to come and visit. 

Who knows what's going to happen? We can't know. And while of course there are always things that we can look into and advance and, you know, we can make educated choices, we cannot make life-proof choices. Those don't exist.

Co-creation is happening everywhere around us all the time, and there is no approach, there is no strategy that is going to ensure that things are going to turn out exactly the way that we intended. So what does that mean for your coffee shop, or whatever is the thing that you've been dreaming of doing, and stopping yourself because you haven't figured out the perfect life-proof strategy because you don't know what will happen, and it's just too scary, right?

So maybe it's like, oh, I've been wanting to write a book, but I don't know that it will actually sell, or I've been wanting to start a podcast, but I don't know that people will actually listen to it, or I've been wanting to leave my partner, but I don't know that I will find anyone who's a better match for me, or I've been wanting to buy this house, but I don't know that it's a good investment. Right? 

All of those places are places that it's really easy to avoid being in process, like, avoid experimenting with or trying the thing because the product, the specific desired outcome we're looking for is not guaranteed. But what I'm saying is it's never guaranteed. [laugh] Like, it's never guaranteed. We never know what is going to happen next. 

OK. So how do we deal with this? How do we trust the process when the product isn't guaranteed? Here's what I think. [laugh] There's several different parts here. Number one, if I don't know what's going to happen, then let me invest less in deferred enjoyment, and more in present, current enjoyment.

This is also countercultural because the culture says, "Work hard now. Enjoy later. Pay your dues. Build your retirement fund. Suck it up and suffer through." Trusting the process means that I am interested in how things feel now, that I am remembering that that co-creative power I talked about, that power of choice, and power to create, it is only ever in the present moment.

This right here, this is where we have the most power. And so even though I am told by the dominant culture all the time that right now is for putting my head down and sucking it up and suffering through, if I trust the process, if I want to fully step into my power to choose and to co-create, then I'm going to begin to choose the life I want now. Nothing is promised. Nothing is guaranteed. But I do have this choice right now. 

I do have this afternoon to choose what to do with. So trusting the process, or bearing the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can, I think begins with being more fully present in the present, in our present moment choices, to be less worried about what's going to happen, less worried about whether or not it's going to work out because we really can't know, and to be more interested in what lights us up right now, to be more interested in where we find vitality, where we find meaningful connection, where we feel the truth of our power to choose right now.

OK. So present focus is I think the first thing. To trust the process, it's to be fully in the process. Three spells or beliefs now that I want to share with you. Number one, understanding as I am here in this process there is no one right way to do this. There is no one correct way. 

If I'm looking for the best way, it is not findable because I just don't know what all's going to happen because I am co-creating with all these other forces: the weather, the economy, Starbucks, Harry Styles. I'm co-creating with all of it, right? There is no one right way to do it. 

I remember once I went to a parent-teacher night. My daughter was in fifth grade, and she was in this little magnet program, and I went to this parent-teacher night, and she was talking about their approach to teaching math, and she gave all of the parents like a complicated problem. I don't remember what it was. It was something like what's 569 times 30? 

And so she asks this question to a room full of parents, and then the parents kind of give the answer, and she says, "OK, how did you get to the answer?" And all of these parents had different answers. Some of them, I was just like I would love a tour of your brain. [laugh] I don't know how you thought of that particular way to do that math in your mind. 

P.S., my answer was—she was like, "How did you get your answer, Natalie?" I was like, "I put it in the calculator on my phone," [laugh] which is also legit, right? We all had our ways of solving that problem, and that was her point. Her point was the way that we are teaching math here is we want students to see that there are lots of different ways to solve this problem. 

There is not one right way. There are lots of different ways. And the goal is, right, we figure out what's the math that actually works best for you? What's the one that makes sense to you? I just thought that was incredible, and that is process being important, right? Like, the process actually matters, and there's not one correct way to do it.

Second, if there's no right way, my most free self also wants to believe there's no wrong way. There's no right. There's no wrong. Wrong is not a thing. Mistakes are not a thing. 

My favorite self believes this. The rest of me is not completely on board with that, and so here's what I've come up with. This is something I've been writing in my own Time Witchery planner [laugh], my own Time Witchery, my beliefs section. "Even my mistakes yield abundance." 

So, again, I would prefer to believe there aren't mistakes, but, eh, some things sure seem like mistakes. But what I say is, you know what, even my mistakes, even my missteps, even the things that I did that, oof, that really did not work out the way I intended, they yield abundance because I squeeze the abundance from them. They give me wisdom. They show me what doesn't work. They give me experience. 

Even my mistakes yield abundance, and that helps me to be less afraid of doing the, quote, unquote, "wrong thing" or going the wrong way. It's like, well, even if it's the wrong way, I'm still going to get something out of it; maybe not the thing that I hoped for, but it won't be for naught. It's never for naught. The only thing that's for naught is not doing anything at all. 

OK. So there's no one right way. Even my mistakes yield abundance. And then third one here: every choice, every experience that I make gives me another piece of the puzzle. 

If you listened to the episode last week about how Mind Witchery was made, I talked a little bit about how I taught yoga for a decade, and I don't teach yoga any longer. I don't have anything to do with the yoga world, in fact. And, at the same time, teaching yoga gave me a certain skill set that I totally use in a different way now, right?

I could say, oh, that was a waste, like, all that time spent building a career that I don't even have anymore. But even my mistakes yield abundance. I got a lot out of that training, out of that experience. Those choices that I made to cultivate that particular work gave me pieces of the puzzle that I use all the time today.

Same with my time in graduate school. Like, I almost have a PhD in English literature. [laugh] And while I was in the process of getting it, I was so miserable. It was so wrong fit for me. It was really bad, y'all. It was not a match for me. 

I was in process toward a product, which was a doctoral degree and, you know, theoretically, a career in academia. And because the process of getting it was so ill-fitting for me, and because I found somehow the courage to stop writing my dissertation, and start doing something else, I was able to choose differently. 

And, yet, every choice, every experience gives me another piece of the puzzle. And that experience helped me to understand so much about exploitative environments, so much about the length to which over-performers are willing to go and, you know, so much about how to write well, and how to make an argument and, ooh, how to close read. Because really what I was doing as an English major person was I was learning to close read, meaning, I was learning to look at a text, and to see not just what was in the text but also what was underneath it. 

And, do you know, that's what I do as a coach. Isn't that fun? That's exactly what coaching is, or the way that I do it is I am a close listener, I guess. I listen to what people are saying, and I pick up the patterns of thinking that are underneath them. I pick up some of the philosophies or the assumptions, and I help my clients to look differently at the narratives of their lives. 

So that experience, even though it didn't yield the product that I intended, absolutely gave me pieces of the puzzle that I needed and that I use today. So I'd love for you just in this moment to think for yourself. Think about something that you left, or something that didn't work out the way you intended. And when you think back to it, and you think, "Well, even my mistakes yield abundance, and every choice, every experience gives me another piece of the puzzle," how's that true? 

Seeing how that is true, how there is no one right way, how this life is full of twists and turns of co-creative mystery, how there is no foolproof plan or ironclad strategy that can help us to maneuver it, what might happen if instead what we tried to do was to trust in the process, was always to be looking for the abundance that our experiences yield, always to be collecting the wisdom, and always to be orienting toward what feels good now? What aligns with our values now? What is lighting us up now? 

That is trusting the process, and allowing ourselves to be in process, which is really the only place we ever are. We are all works in progress, always. And I think, and I hope today's episode helps you to think that that thought can actually be freeing, and can help us to bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can. 

So here's to trusting the process. I'm right here with you. As always, thank you so much for listening. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world. 

Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time. 

End of recording