Trust the process – Robert Greene

This is an excerpt from Robert Greene’s book Las leyes para todos los días: Meditaciones sobre poder, seducción, maestría, estrategia y naturaleza humana

JANUARY 30

Trust the Process

Let us say we are learning the piano. In the beginning, we are outsiders.When we first study the piano, the keyboard looks rather intimidating—we don’t understand the relationships between the keys, the chords, the pedals, and everything else that goes into creating music. Although we might enter with excitement about what we can learn, we quickly realize how much hard work there is ahead of us. The great danger is that we give in to feelings of boredom, impatience, fear, and confusion. We stop observing and learning. The process comes to a halt. If, on the other hand, we manage these emotions and allow time to take its course, something remarkable begins to take shape. As we continue to observe and follow the lead of others, we gain clarity, learning the rules and seeing how things work and fit together. If we keep practicing, we gain fluency; basic skills are mastered, allowing us to take on newer and more exciting challenges. We begin to see connections that were invisible to us before. We slowly gain confidence in our ability to solve problems or overcome weaknesses through sheer persistence. At a certain point, we move from student to practitioner. Instead of just learning how others do things, we bring our own style and individuality into play. As years go by and we remain faithful to this process, yet another leap takes place—to mastery. The keyboard is no longer something outside of us; it is internalized and becomes part of our nervous system, our fingertips. We have learned the rules so well that we can now be the ones to break or rewrite them.

Daily Law: Trust the process—time is the essential ingredient of mastery. Use it to your advantage.