Why You Can Trust the Process of Life
What does it mean to trust the process?
Trusting the process is adopting a flexible, intuitive and organic approach to life experiences, including business. The strategy can be learned, but first you might find it helpful to know how your human sensors process information to find practical value to integrate this awareness technique.
Lots of times we think we have all the answers to proceed through life in the day-to-day activities and events—past, current, future—although there is a time for simple trust in the process of life, especially when we want to evoke new and unknown experiences—business and personal. In business you’ll hear business people refer to this strategy as organic growth, or in a spiritual community, this process is allowing your higher self to show you the way to realize information with your intuition.
But why would you wait for some inspired information to organically appear, when you can simply be aggressive in action and get some stuff done, or hope it works for the best. Well, one of the reasons you may want to trust the process is because you simply do not have all the information needed to proceed forward because the experience you’ve had will continue to create similar experiences in the future, and what you desire is outside of that, which require new thinking outside of your conscious awareness. You may not realize it but you actually are unconsciously tuning information out in three ways. When too much information is presented to you, your mind will delete, distort, or generalize the information to process it all.
Did you know that our five human sensors of eyes (sight), skin (touch), ears (hear), nose (smell), and mouth (taste) send 11 million bits per second to the brain for processing, but our mind or conscious awareness can only process up to 50 bits per second? Do you know what happens to the information that doesn't get processed in that second? The mind runs it through three filters based on your current internal representation, state, and physiology. Depending on what your mind can process in that second of time because of your present environment the information is either deleted, distorted, or generalized.
Be Open To Trusting the Process
Being open is a way to allow yourself into trusting a process, or not oppose the possibility of a new way of action. You were deleting, distorting, and generalizing information without real awareness of this being done, a new way or process or strategy is likely outside of your past experiences because you simply didn’t the information, or even consider it.
The way you can get started with trusting the process and being open to trusting is let go of control. It’s impossible to control a new desired outcome because you don’t even know what the steps are in the new process yet. All you know is you want to get to the desired outcome, or the place you want to be, although you still don’t know the steps of how to get there, so you begin by being open to trusting the process. Know that in state of trusting the process for an unknown process, steps or strategy to get there, that everything is actually pure potential—it’s never been done before, anything is possible—so you naturally must let go of control. And since the process is unknown, you can allow yourself to trust in the process to deliver your ideas organically (or intuitive insights) hunch by hunch. Next, you take baby steps forward to discover this new process, but it all starts with trust.
First, let the desire to reign control over an outcome completely go and trust that you’ll get there, and the process of how to get there will slowly reveal itself to you through ideas, suggestions, actions, steps, hunches, and business strategy will unfold and transpire for you magically simply because you are open to new thought forms to be received, ones that align to your desired outcome. This is a key step because, in the past, a solution maybe was trying to surface for you, but you were trying to control the outcome based on a current internal representation, state, or physiology. When you allow the trust to flow, you are accepting new information and it will naturally run through those filters differently for processing.
Be Practical about The New Trust Process
Trusting the process is strict management of wishful thinking and doubt versus certainty and self-worth. Discernment is between these states are key. To help you be practical in process trusting to encourage positive new ways of thinking and acceptance of past ways of thinking, stay present. My favourite book on this topic is The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, or if you want a business perspective check out the book Decisions by Jim Treliving. Tolle teaches the benefits of self-mastery in being present and Treliving teaches how to discern creative thought forms to make practical decisions for business.
Our perceptions of life are formed from past information, experiences, events, memories and also future ideas and visions of where we can go, and then we’re in the present moment of it all, so all that information goes through filters (delete, distort, generalize) to shape your reality and future world and the world you presently live in—be practical about trusting the process.
There is a huge advantage in trusting the organic process of your intuition, allowing things to happen organically to you, to allow life to happen to you without control and judgment, or at least, suspend your judgment and desire to control until you have received enough information to discern the ability make decisions with ease. Ease doesn’t mean, easy, it means in this context, to move carefully, gradually, or with care, or gently. When you get to this level of understanding, new ideas come as new thought forms and this creative thinking is what we need to run through practical discernment filters, to expose the merits or faults of problems, challenges, and issues of the creative thought that comes from trusting the process. This creative thinking is actually the practical door to open to trusting the process— it is what will serve you to discover new ways to the best or optimal outcome.
Creative solutions want to be exposed, but if it is beyond your conscious awareness or not being received because of those three filters that delete, distort, or generalize information you will not be able to get practical about trusting a new process.
Discover Inattentional Blindness and Information Theory
If you want more information and sources on this selective data processing I recommend the book The Universal Principles of Design and in the table of contents find Inattentional Blindness. The book discusses how people are blind to unrelated stimuli. It’s a simple failure to notice information that’s happening in your experience in the environment. This is just your mind not processing all the details because of that 50 bit per second capacity. You can also visit Encyclopedia Britannica to read more on the details of how information is processed by our wonderful human sensors unpacking how fast and how much data is processed.
Selective Attention Test For Self
There's also a video on YouTube demonstrating how the mind will delete, distort and generalize information, as it presents a visual example of our human data filters being put to work. While watching the video viewers are asked to count the number of times the white t-shirt team passes a basketball. See if you notice anything that gets deleted, distorted, or generalized. You might have to watch it a few times to catch the information.
Video length 1:22 minutes
The original, world-famous awareness test from Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris. Check out our book and website for more information.
What are your top strategies for trusting the process? Leave your insights and comments below for others to benefit.
About the Author
Christine Whone is a Designer, Digital Strategist, and Online Instructor helping business professionals create their desired outcomes in business and entrepreneurship using design and technology.
“Set yourself up for success.”