For a while, “trust the process” was my motto. I was saying it for every situation as a means of reminding myself that God’s plan is perfect and that everything will work out in due time. I had been repeating the phrase during meditation, in the shower, as I exhaled in a difficult yoga pose-all that. I felt so strongly about the phrase that I was telling other people to keep calm and trust the process, too. It all seemed so simple and so soothing until one day when it wasn’t.

I don’t remember the exact situation, I just remember how it made me feel. I remember the bitter taste in my mouth, the tears that filled my eyes, the heat that rushed over my body, and the uncontrollable urge to lash out and let loose on the first person I saw. Luckily, nobody was there. It’s no secret that I have trouble expressing and managing my emotions, it’s one of the many things that I’m unpacking and working through right now, but on this day my emotions seemed like a burden I didn’t want to carry. I remember sitting on my yoga mat in front of my crystals and just crying. Normally, this is when I would take deep breaths and repeat “trust the process” until I calmed down but that wasn’t an option.

I went from feeling everything to feeling nothing, numb with confusion. Trust the process…what process?! I sat there on my mat with Bob Marley on repeat wondering what my granddaddy would do. What about grandma? What about Grip? Bob Marley? Jesus? Anybody?! How would anybody else climb out of this depressive state? I couldn’t come up with anything, which just made me more frustrated. I cried hard until my head ached and I got up, showered and went to work like nothing had even happened.

Fast forward a few weeks to when I was having a conversation with one of the most amazing people in my life and everything clicked: you don’t just trust the process, you have to learn to trust the process. Trusting the process is a process in itself! It’s not always pretty and it doesn’t always make sense because sometimes it isn’t what you expect or think you need it to be. I remember hanging up the phone and going straight to the shower. I stood under the hot water thinking about why I quit “trusting the process”. Why the sudden shift? After much deliberation and critical self-talk, I realized that I put too much emphasis on the idea of trusting the process and not enough emphasis on trusting God and myself.

Reflection helped me realize that in every situation where I thought things were at their worst and there was no way out, something beautiful happened. I had to get through the storm to enjoy the rainbow and that’s how my life has always been. The storm was God giving me the strength I needed to pull through because He has an amazing life for me, but I’ll have to work for it. I had forgotten that, though. I was screaming “trust the process” and not using any of the skills or knowledge I had been blessed with.

When you want something, you must work for it. All those cliché quotes about nothing worth having being easy to attain are true. Are you trusting the idea of trusting the process or are you truly trusting God and yourself? What does it look like for you to trust the process? Take some time to really think about it, because when things get hard and you want to quit or don’t understand why it all has to be so hard, you’ll need to circle back to your answers. On the road to be great, you are an ever-evolving artist and your life is your artistic expression. Open your mind and your heart to growth and trust that along the way, you’ll learn all that you need to get to where you want to be.

Trust the process. Trust God. Trust yourself.