One of the best pieces of advice I’ve gotten came from a good friend and informal mentor of mine, Noreen. I met Noreen during my early years as an Aviation Maintenance Technician (the less technical and more familiar term would be grease monkey). Noreen had already been in aviation for many years, so she knew a lot of people and had a lot of connections. Whenever I had insecurities about something, I always went to Noreen for advice. You have to understand, the aviation industry can be a brutal environment for a woman. I’ve always been open to any recommendations; however, I paid especially close attention to Noreen.
Anyway, on one particular occasion, I came to her about a job offer. I told her that I wasn’t sure I was experienced enough for the job, I didn’t feel like I would live up to their expectations and frankly, it seemed like too much work for me to learn something new…She cut me off before I could rattle off more reasons why I probably should not take the job and said it was all BS. She told me that she knew for a fact that I would be successful at ANYTHING I set myself to do. Then she wrote on a small piece of paper and handed it to me (I still have that little piece of paper in a file somewhere). In capital letters, she wrote, “TRUST THE PROCESS”. Hell. What process? How in crimany am I to find it? Where are the steps to follow? No answers. (Pshh). I’m better off staying where I’m at than trying to figure out some secret process. (Pshh).
Needless to say, I took the job and all the while, told myself to ‘trust the process’- whatever that meant. Well, I’ve found the process is this: It starts with going in to the unknown, not knowing whether or not you will be successful. You are following the process when you keep moving forward even as you realize that you still won’t know everything about everything. It continues as you learn to quickly regurgitate information for a customer or reiterate instructions stated in an emergency meeting. Until it comes to you: you have finally experienced and learned enough about your job. And when you come across the stuff about your job that you don’t know, well you just TRUST THE PROCESS until you do.
Many years later, I still tell myself to ‘trust the process’. So when I am hosting a conference call with presidents of several companies around the globe involved in the type approval of a product I am entirely unfamiliar with, instead of telling myself, “I have no idea what the product is!”, or “How am I going to facilitate the call?”, I simply take the lead by first regurgitating the little bit of information they gave me and then asking for volunteers to chime in, all the while trusting the process and knowing it will soon work itself out.
So my advice to you today is when you feel you don’t have enough know-how to move forward, try trusting the process and see how things pan out for you. Trust me, you’ll be presently surprised at how much you can accomplish.
Moxie Design Studios™