Trust the Process
You might be thinking, yeah, but this is supposed to be an essay on trusting the process. And it is. I trust the process of friends teaching friends to ski to end in disaster.
I can’t remember if I invited Katie up to Anthony Lakes or if maybe she thought it would be fun to hang out at the lodge while I skied. She brought her laptop and a book, and I stopped often to come into the café area to hang out with her and sip coffee. Anthony Lakes’ motto is, “Same as it Ever Was.” The county owns the little ski hill up in the northeast corner of Oregon and the old two-story building looked like a throwback to the seventies, but it sported a real wood fireplace, and the small resort with a single chairlift was the perfect place for families. Katie was working on something, maybe the Willow School business plan or her own schoolwork.
At the end of the day, she announced, “I want to try skiing next time you come up.”
She continued with a caveat: “I’m not going to like it. I’m not athletic, don’t like sports, I don’t like speed, or heights, or the cold.
I never need an excuse to head up into the mountains, so we went up again the following weekend. I bought her a lesson because I’ve seen and heard friends trying to teach friends, and it’s worth it to me to trust my friends and family to the experts. You might be thinking, yeah, but this is supposed to be an essay on trusting the process. And it is. I trust the process of friends teaching friends to ski to end in disaster.
The bunny slope is less steep than most ramps we experience at stores in town, but for a beginner, it can be terrifying. Skiing is a lesson in letting go and allowing yourself to fall down the mountain at 30 miles per hour while balancing on thin rails of metal-edged wood and fiberglass.
The resort was experiencing a temperature inversion that day. Katie spent a good half-hour in the lodge bundling up for the winter cold at 6000 feet above sea level, but the sun was out and it was maybe 50 degrees Fahrenheit at the bottom of the beginner lift, so she was stripping off outer layers, throwing her scarf and coat and hat onto the fence around the loading area.
I went up with her the first time and coaxed her down. (p.s. those rope tows are really hard to manage!). At the bottom of her first little run, a kid fell down right in her path, and she didn’t know how to stop yet, so she just waved her poles, yelling, “Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!” The child’s mom was standing next to me as we watched Katie crash into her son in super slow motion. No one was hurt, and it was funny as hell for at least the two of us watching, but then it was lesson time, so I took off with plans to meet up in the lodge later, which we did.
After lunch, she felt ready to tackle a longer run, so I accompanied her up the chair lift. She disembarked fine, and we took a hard right to one of the few beginner slopes. Katie was doing okay until she crashed into a pile of soft snow next to the terrain park. Snowboarders were jumping and landing right next to where she lay, struggling to untangle her skis. I’d stopped a bit down the slope and was considering kicking off my skis to go help her, but she put her poles in the air and shouted, “I’m OH-KAY!”
She made it to the bottom after a few more crashes and some frowns thrown my way. We turned in her skis and boots at the rental shop and proceeded back down the mountain toward home. “She sat with her hands in her lap, staring out the windshield at the sky-blue pink of the impending evening, no doubt contemplating the bruises forming on her knees and legs.
“That was not fun. I hated it. But I’m not going to let that mountain kick my butt,” she exclaimed. “When are you going again?”
“How about next weekend?” I asked tentatively.
I’m writing this now from Pagosa Springs, famous not only for the Wolf Creek Ski area that boasts the most snow of all Colorado resorts but also for the semi-glamourous hot springs along the San Juan River that cuts right through the middle of town. Katie has now been skiing for eleven seasons, and I classify her as an expert. Black diamonds don’t bother her, and she loves skiing in and out of glades of trees and down slopes mounded with moguls.
Katie didn’t become an expert alpine skier overnight. She worked hard, took lessons, practiced, developed her muscles and the extra coordination needed for downhilling. It was a process, not an event. She persevered and persisted. She made it over the initiation, and along the way, learned to ski powder (a process) and moguls and steeps and trees--and she loves it. We live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, right at the base of Ski Santa Fe and about an hour from Ski Taos, one of the premier ski resorts in the States. We get season passes every year, and even though our home resort is amazing, we like to travel a couple of times each year to places like Wolf Creek and Angel Fire. It's a love we share, and she’s my equal now, so we go everywhere together.
So, back to the process. We can conquer so many things if we establish the goal, then the objectives that lead to that goal, and then the process that accomplishes the goal. The ideal process results in the inevitable goal. There’s nothing new here about goal setting, but what is important is the right process. Once a goal is set, it’s the process that gets us there, and when we set worthy goals and trust the process, we often do better than we expected. Katie’s initial goal was just to be able to ski the beginner run at Anthony Lakes without falling down. She accomplished that and stuck with the process and went from level I to level II to level III to expert. And the real outcome is she practices a sport she loves that fills her with joy. Also, she’s no longer scared of the speed or of the expanse below us as our skis dangle from the chair, and she’s dressed up for the cold with her mittens and snow shell and boots and helmet.
In fact, we took lessons a couple of years ago, joining the expert skiers and not just holding our own, but skiing really well with them. The process was to take lessons, practice, practice, practice, and then set new goals that pushed us even further, and along the way, I became a better, more confident, and skilled skier.
I am currently creating technical courses for accountants, and in order for them to be compliant with the state associations, the writer has to be a CPA, so I just renewed my CPA license. It was a prescribed process to renew. The overall goals are set by the Oregon State Board of Accountancy (still my state of certification), and all I had to do was take the courses to accumulate the education credits because I already have the experience (that’s how I got the gig). In fact, college is a great example of trusting the process. It’s different for everyone if you focus on the details, but overall, the process is set out for the student—enroll in the prescribed courses, attend class, read the book, do the assignments, study hard, ask questions, take the exams. Do that for however long it takes and then graduate and hopefully get a job (a different process but often an extension of the course work.)
My goal in college was to get a job without having to go through the tedious interview process, which eventually led me to an internship with a firm I liked (either by accident or providence, I’m not sure which). That firm kept me on and supported me through completing my college courses and earning my certification.
That’s an easy process to trust because it’s a path walked by a lot of people and established by professionals in the industry. Back then, it was pretty easy to get a job with an accounting firm. Might be even easier now because there is a lack of candidates graduating. I have no desire to be a working accountant; I’m a writer now. That’s the goal I had and the process I followed, even when it seemed impossible, or I felt defeated. I chose the path to accountancy because that process almost certainly ended up with a job if not a career, but I did not choose, consciously, to be a writer. That seems to be hard-wired into me and it’s always been a goal of mine to make a decent living as a writer.
I’m watching our sixteen-month-old niece learn all the things, from walking to talking to dancing and playing. It’s a process she doesn’t even question despite falling down or being slightly incomprehensible (she just grabbed my glasses and made a mess of them). And we, as parents and honorary aunt and uncle (she belongs to our best friends–not really a blood relation, but we treat her as such), trust the process. It’s different for everyone but also the same for a lot of people. The point is to focus on the process. It’s good to keep the goal in mind but don’t let it limit you. Katie and I are continually surprised by how much we exceed our expectations when we establish a solid process and follow it.
Also, not to be a downer, but we are always following some kind of process. I am trying to get back in shape after a bad accident two years ago. However, my process is eating whatever I want (to some extent) and skipping strength-building in favor of work or play. That process does not result in losing weight, but it is a good process for gaining (and enjoying life). Even so, I have the process to get back to lean and fit mapped out; I just need to do it and stick to it. It’s simple, just not easy.
Writing has taught me a lot about trusting the process. I have a routine–almost a ritual. Writing a 300-page novel or even a 90-page screenplay doesn’t happen without the creative process. In fact, most of the creative writing I do goes on in my head, and I do a lot of outlining and revising. A couple of pages a day equals a first draft of a screenplay in a month (revisions take me a LOT longer—some projects take years). In the process, it feels like I am trying to wrestle a wet mattress up three flights of stairs. If I only focused on the goal (a finished draft) or the outcome (a produced work of art), there’s no way I would ever complete a project. I have to stay present with the process, writing and trusting.
Learn to enjoy the challenge. Don’t let it kick your butt. Persevere and persist. When you fall down, it’s not failure; it’s learning—part of the process. Get back up and try again. And maybe as important as establishing the right routine is letting go of any fixation on the outcome. Focus on the process. If you take the time to establish the right process and then follow it to the end: the outcome will amaze you.