Why We Need a Process to Change

(I posted this originally on my blog.)

So, I was looking at why we need a process to change anything or to gain any skill or ‘ability.’

I Don’t Need a Process to Change, It Should Be Immediate

I used to think that I should be able to gain any information, skill, ability, or change in me (my self-personality) or my life (world, environment, job, relationships, martial arts, etc.) instantaneously.

Like, why has there to be a process? I should be able to gain all the things I seek quantumly, instantaneously, and have them magically manifest out of ‘will power’ and ‘intent’ alone.

Years down this road, I realized that that is not quite how we currently function in this physical reality.

The physical has shown me over and over again that anything of significance, skill acquisition, and acquisition of some sort of ability, technique, realization, understanding, and so on takes a process.

A process that is happening in space and time of this physical reality.

For example, I used to be hesitant and resistant to train specific new exercises for my martial arts because I thought, why should I? Assuming that I should just be able to ‘get access to’ that ability without practice. This does sound quite delusional, I know. But that was the mindset or view in me for that time. It doesn’t need any judgment or self-judgment either. It just requires understanding and learning.

A Process Requires Effort & Time and There Is the Possibility to Fail

Then I started to bring that point back to self. Looking at and trying to source WHY I want it all instantaneously without putting in work, effort, sweat, energy, and time?

In this questioning process, I found that I was resistant to walking a process. Why? Because it required effort, time, energy, and the thing I was most afraid of: the potential to fail.

There is always the potential or possibility to fail when we try something. Be it to get to an understanding, learn something like maths, programming, specific martial arts techniques, and body movements. Or anything else we strive to acquire as an ability or skill or change inside ourselves and our world/life.

I realized I can’t fight the process. And the more I fight or resist it, the more I just push the inevitable away. The inevitable being that I need to ‘sacrifice’ my time, effort, energy, and RISK walking a journey/process where the stakes of failing is always a possibility.

But, if I don’t commit and accept walking a process, then what I seek to create can never come.

A seed takes time to spring into a flower, fruit, vegetable, tree, or anything else. It doesn’t manifest instantaneously, and needs the right effort put into it (water, sunlight…). It requires time (days, weeks, months) to eventually start becoming something.

It Took a Process to Become You & Will Take a Process to Undo the You You Have Become

So, to change something in me or my world will also take time, effort, energy, consistency. And the will and commitment to unconditionally walk the PROCESS it is going to take for it.

Now, I feel much more comfortable, relaxed, and at peace with processes. Knowing that creating something – be it a martial arts skill, ability, any form of self-change, or change in our reality/life will take a process. A process to which I must COMMIT.

“Just walk the process and let the things of the process you are walking unfold. The process is the cause, the effect is what will manifest from that process. The effect will come if you do the cause” is what I keep reminding myself when I start getting fidgety and kind of upset or resistant about walking a process.

It was also a process over many years to create the personalities, thoughts, or emotional-/feeling reactions, or behavior that has become mine/me.

Just a few points I wanted to share about ‘process.’ Maybe it will help someone else who may have been, or in time, might be struggling with the point of “Why do I have to walk a process.”

Remember, this is but one dimension/layer/reason I found was prominent in me of why I, sort of, ‘hated’ walking a process. And why/how I held onto an ideal that everything should be immediate and without effort and time put in from me.

Lessons Learned

• A process is not something terrible. Check-in with myself if I have any negative association or emotional relationship to the word and concept of a ‘process.’ Then sort that relationship out. For if I don’t, then my associations and judgment to the word and concept of a ‘process’ is going to make it so much harder for me to accept and co-exist with something that is a fact in this reality at the moment.
• Everything in this reality seems to require a process to create. Therefore a process appears to point to a universal law, if you will, of this reality. Thus it also makes sense that a process if needed to change me. To change things in me or my world/reality that I am not ‘happy with.’ Or simply would like to change. Or, because I know deep down in my awareness that I need to change it for, it’s not the best I can be, which I sense or see is possible for me and my life.
• Stop fighting/resisting the requirement of a process. I need to commit to walking a process unconditionally. Fighting it, and being emotional about it is only going to result in pushing the inevitable further away. The inevitable is that a process if needed.
• As I have, long enough (for years) shown to myself through being a ‘bit’ stubborn, lol, that a process if required to change myself or things in my world. Or to create anything in this world. Or inside myself as a characteristic, attribute, or expression of my ‘Self.’
• A process is for processing something. Processing something is ‘working with it’ or ‘working through it.’ It can be taking it apart, looking at it, amending it. Or removing things from something, adding other things to it, modifying it, understanding it, etc. And I can see clearly see that there is a LOT I need to PROCESS. There is a LOT of thoughts, behaviors, backchats, emotions, feelings, the way I react to different things in me or the world, etc. that need to be processed/worked-with/worked-through. And that will take TIME and ENERGY I pour into it.
• A process is designed to CREATE or CAUSE something to happen, or manifest from it. A process is a CAUSE. Every CAUSE has an EFFECT. And doing the CAUSE must guarantee the EFFECT. They are tied together like a see-saw. You push one end down the other rises, or emerges, or manifests – just to use some different terminology. So, walk the process/cause to create the effect/manifestation/creation the process is designed for.
• Chill and relax a bit, lol. Because it is going to take TIME and EFFORT. Change or acquisition of skill or some ability will not happen out of the blue. It is going to ‘demand’ effort and time and energy and commitment and consistency to be put into it. Trying to ‘rush’ to ‘create it faster’ didn’t work. Just try to do it more ‘on time’ without postponement or procrastination. Then it will be faster accomplished. It’s like the quote from Lao Tzu:

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” — Lao Tzu