The Process is Part of the Plan

When I was 23 years old, headed to Nashville to pursue songwriting, a wise friend who had spent years in the music biz handed me a post it note and told me to keep it in my day timer and look at it from time to time.  It simply said, "The Process is Part of the Plan".   With my sweet naive confidence, I thanked him and agreed that it was "So True," although, I had no clue the depth of what it actually meant yet.   When I got to Nashville, I had lunch with a man who personally vowed to help me, and he made a toast to "5 years from now, we'll be sitting here celebrating your first big cut!"   I smiled and toasted to the agreement, while inside I defiantly disagreed it would take 5 years!  In my mind, I didn't have 5 years to waste, for several made up reasons. Besides, I had a history of things coming easy to me, especially music, as I was somewhat a prodigy piano player after all.  And if there was one thing this Kansas farm girl was raised with, it was a strong hard work ethic.  You don't stop until the job is done.  I worked 6-7 days a week, co-writing 1 or 2 songs in the daytime, and then recorded work tapes and created melodies for the next day's appointments all through the night.   

But as fate would have it, it was 5 years to the month when I received my first cut.   What they seemed to know that I didn't was there is no amount of determination or ambition that gets you 'there' quicker.   Hard work may eventually pay off, but it isn't the guarantee.  Exceptional talent or abilities may get you noticed, but it doesn't entitle you to anything.   Goals, plans and deadlines may make you feel better, but it still doesn't give you any control over the outcome.   

What those 5 years taught me is the PROCESS isn't about proving yourself or earning what you feel worthy of, and it certainly isn't a race to get your success before someone else does.   

The PROCESS is about preparing you to hold that much success when it does come.   It's about the subtle unfolding of challenges and obstacles that force you to discover parts of yourself you didn't even know existed.   It's about perfectly placed relationships and circumstances that are assigned to help you, guide you, or even trip you up if you're blindly headed the opposite direction of your soul's calling.  It's there to teach you it is always more about what you're giving, than what you're getting from your efforts.  The PROCESS exists to remind you that even when you do accomplish your desired ending, you will never feel truly complete.  You will only want more, and the process will begin all over again.   

If you resist the time it takes, it will feel like life is resisting you.   But once you embrace the process in all of it's wisdom and trust in it's own divine timing, LOVE will find you wherever you are on the journey.  

Today, when I'm reminiscing about the 'good ole days' with industry friends, we never speak about that times we stood on a stage and received our trophies.  We don't talk about what number we got to on the charts, or how much money we made.   

But we do talk about all the painful, fun, strange, agonizing yet miraculous parts of the PROCESS it took to get there....for that's where the true 'meaning of it all' lives. 

LOVE is experienced through living, not accomplishing.