Trusting the F-ing Process

In the trailer for the film #LambertandStamp, Chris Stamp, the co-creator and producer of The Who is seen saying, “We never said we could do it.” Chris and his partner, Kit Lambert, are an incredible example of setting out to do one thing – make a movie about a rock and roll band – and then changing direction when the Universe made it clear that they needed to.

It is a wonderful reminder to me to trust the process, or as a training group I facilitated at Onsite Workshops a few years back said, “Trust the F-ing Process.” So often, when I think I know what direction I’m meant to take, the Universe has other plan. As a dear friend of mine says, “If you hit a wall, turn left.” I can choose to either continue to push through, exhausting myself to “make” something happen, or I can surrender to the process.

JL Moreno talked about life as a co-creation – I do my part and then I allow others, including the Universe, to do theirs. I’ve learned the hard way over the years that all I can do is take the action, and let go of the results. And if the results aren’t getting me anywhere, then I need to take a different action. Sometimes when I think I know what’s “right” for me, it’s not.

Sometimes there’s a divine plan for me that I couldn’t have even imagined – which brings me back to my dear friend Chris Stamp. His own drug addiction led him to recovery, which led him to become an addictions counselor and eventually study psychodrama. I could feel his disappointment at the end of the film about how he’d had this dream for decades of directing [a film] that he never got to direct. And yet, in his role as a psychodrama director working with recovering alcoholics and addicts, he got to direct hundreds and hundreds of psychodramas. Because he never got to have his dream career as a Hollywood director, hundreds and hundreds of people’s stories came to life, allowing them an opportunity to heal.

Trust the F-ing Process, indeed.