Honor the Process
The plant already knows how to grow.
I’ve realized that I don’t like feeling unsure. The floor may as well be crumbling underneath me as I scramble to find, or perhaps create the illusion of, solid ground… arrive at an answer, figure something out, understand what’s happening, or do anything to give me a sense of reassurance.
An image comes to mind as I reflect on this. I can see myself spending so much time and energy preparing my armor, checking every piece and making sure there are no gaps where a knife could get through. Uncertainty has so often felt exposing, as though it leaves me open and unprotected for criticism and, ultimately, the feeling that I have failed.
So, as you might imagine, my efforts to create certainty became a coping method. It was one of the ways my nervous system learned to create safety. If I could forge understanding, anticipate something, or draw a conclusion before anyone else, maybe I could prevent mistakes, disappointment, or feeling exposed.
That armoring up has rippled through every area of my life.
It often looked like self-monitoring. Hiding my true interests, my curiosities, my desire to explore, to ask questions, to acknowledge my fears, and to discover how I really felt about something.
It also looked like mastering my body through strict exercise regimens and eating plans, to feel, well, powerful and in control.
I even found purpose in an endless spiritual quest to be better and get to the bottom of things. I wanted to live from revelation and conviction, always searching for what I believed and why. This is something I still value, but pursuing it with exhausting hypervigilance wasn’t truly about living from conviction. It was another way to strive for protection and approval. My efforts were bulldozing me into trying to be right, more spiritual, and, if I’m honest, more superior. I couldn’t see the beauty in letting things be in process, letting questions remain open, or allowing understanding to take its time. I just wanted to feel secure in where I stood.
So many different expressions of the same longing… to be loved.
The idea of certainty seemed to be the perfect way to cover up all evidence of my inadequacies… my humanity. Eventually, this exhausting ruse to run from my own process stopped working. But in that collapse, I actually found opportunities to get to know what I was running from. Apparently not just my pain, but my hopes and desires too. My want for a full, beautiful life.
It started with tiny moments of separation between me and the urge to avoid exposure. The more I practiced this, the more I could stay connected to myself and notice the pattern but not fall into the same old dance.
It is what happens in those little pauses that heals me. I take the time to question and track what is happening within me. Something I’m noticing a lot lately is when an ideal tempts me to overhaul my life in pursuit of it. I pause long enough to weigh that ideal against what is actually here, in the now… in my own messy tracks that are slowly growing on me. I listen to my body and ask: “Is this right for me?”
This is me being a mother to myself, holding the hand of the younger part of me whose favorite dress-up costume is still that armor. Here, my intuition, my curiosity, my pain, my joy, and my humanness all get to be part of the conversation. This helps me move closer to owning my tracks and feeling at home in my skin. Whatever I discover in that movement where I still enough to be with myself, is often the support I need to feel okay in the unfinished process.
My connection to myself remains the anchor.
I love relating things of the heart back to a garden, especially when it comes to honoring the process.
I cannot force a flower to bud. No matter how hard I try, I cannot will it to happen. With all my good intentions and well-meaning effort, I could keep pulling up the plant to check its roots, weakening its chance to thrive each time.
The plant already knows how to grow. It just needs water, sunlight, good soil, and time. I can tend to what is there, pay attention to what it needs, and leave it in the ground long enough to thrive. Something can be alive and developing even when I cannot yet see evidence of it.
This is what Honor the Process has come to mean for me. It is learning to stay near what is still taking shape without demanding that it reveal itself before it is ready.
So now, when I feel myself rushing toward a plan to have everything figured out, I try to stay with the messy uncertainty, for just a little longer.
I usually find that the uncertainty is only part of the story… a storm cloud overhead, meanwhile in that secret place, my roots are running deeper.
This is actually what we experience together in Capacity Lab. We gather around convictions like Honor the Process and explore what it is like to stay with ourselves a little longer, perhaps finding room to let go of some of our armor and own our humanity a little more.
