🎥 Two actionable ways to trust the process

(when nothing’s going your way)

Hello from Nova Scotia,

I'm finally on a new adventure on the east coast of Canada.

This province is best known for its beautiful scenery and, being by the ocean, its cheap lobsters. (Too bad I’m allergic).

Coming here was full of uncertainty, as I didn't know when I'd get here or where I would live.

I didn't get a written contract until the day before I left, and I didn't get my address for accommodation until 2 hours before my arrival.

Day 1 in Nova Scotia. Got to witness a beautiful sunset with lovely people I just met.

Regardless of all of the anxieties, all I could do was trust the process.

In the creator world, trusting the process is a common theme you'll hear. I only really understood what it meant in the last two weeks. 

I achieved something I never thought possible by "trusting the process." 

Here are two of them. 

1. I'm making 4X times my original nursing salary in less than two years (i.e., if I worked for six months on this assignment, I could make six figures in that time span🤯).

2. I gained 2K views on a video in the first few days on YouTube.

Two weeks ago, I struggled to secure a nursing contract, and now, I'm making 4X my nursing salary for doing the exact (if not less) work than I did before.

Being away from my friends and family is expensive, but I don't mind it since I'm pretty young and have no kids.

Also, YouTube has been demotivating because every time I upload a video, I get about 100 - 300 views.

So I was so happy when I finally broke my own record even though I didn’t change anything in my process. I scripted, outsourced my video editing, and published that week.

But how exactly do you trust the process when nothing feels like going your way?

When I thought deeply about it, here's what I came up with:

1. Let go of the outcome.

To get what you want, you must let go. It sounds counterintuitive, but it works. One month ago, I was so obsessed with making YouTube work for me. The more obsessed I was with it, the less I got what I wanted. And the moment I shifted my focus (but still did the work), that's when the results came. I was genuinely confused because I felt like I didn't do anything different.

Similarly, when I was looking for a travel nursing contract, I had this frantic energy feeling like I was running out of time (it was a clue that this desire was coming from a scarcity mindset). And two days after I let go and trusted that I would get a contract, two contracts came on the same day.

This is backed by the principle of Backwards Law. According to Allan Watts, This law states, "the more you try and grab a hold of something, the more it slips through your fingers."

In other words, the more you want something, the more you need to let it go for it to come to you.

2. Have some sort of system/toolkit/framework to work with uncertainty. 

Being a creator and a travel nurse always comes with uncertainty. I'm 100% responsible for my actions, and most of the time, that is a lot of pressure. But the more I'm in this world, the more I feel this is normal.

In that case, the only thing left to do after trusting the process is to create systems, toolkits, and frameworks so I can thrive in this environment.

Here's what that looks like as a creator:

System: publish a YouTube video every Sunday and a newsletter every Friday. Everything else is secondary, but those things will always get priority in terms of daily tasks and actions.

Toolkit: whenever I'm uncertain of something, I remind myself that I've taken countless courses and mentorships, not to mention the endless resources you see online.

Framework: A framework is a tool I can use whenever I encounter the same problem. For instance, when deciding to embark on a new project, here's one question I'd ask myself, "does this help me achieve the goal I set for myself this year?" 

If the answer is no, then I won't do it.

Trusting the process is something I'm still working on, and I know it was a struggle for me when I first heard this phrase, so I hope this helps you.

Trust the process. (Source)

Let me know in the comments when you’ve trusted the process, and the results came to you!

See you next week,

Jerine 💌