Trust the Process

I find myself repeating a single phrase over and over during my time in India – Trust the Process.

Maybe it is patience, or experience (ahem), or years of feebly trying to take my yoga and meditation practice more seriously, but I have come to realize that there is a flow in the world, and that if I can dig deep and trust it, things generally work themselves out. When I can do this, I save myself worry and stress. And when I fight against the flow and try to force things to work as I want them to, pressure, fear, and anxiety fill me.

One example of this is being a passenger in any vehicle on any road in Gurugram. Much like other cities, there are painted lines that designate the orderly fashion in which vehicles should travel. But here, I would call these lines “guidelines” as they are certainly not seen as rules.

Cars, auto-rickshaws, bicycles, motorcycles/mopeds, trucks, buses, and even the occasional cow, camel, or elephant dance an elaborate and fast-paced cha-cha. As an unaccustomed passenger, it can be nothing short of terrifying to watch what feels like dozens of near-miss accidents. This is only exacerbated by that fact that I come from a country that drives on the other side of the road!

Each morning on my way to the NGO’s office, I remind myself that just because I don’t know the dance moves doesn’t mean that I cannot trust those who do to get me from point A to point B safely. And each day, our NGO-appointed driver Sumesh (who is an excellent driver!) patiently weaves around the obstacles and deposits us safely at our destination. Trust the process.

Similarly, the pace and challenge of the IBM Corporate Service Corps assignment has me again focused on going with the flow. My sub-team of three people, including me, struggled initially to get time with our client. It’s fiscal year-end in India now, and the NGOs are busy, busy, busy!

As such, it took us slightly longer than our other colleagues to define how we can best support our partners at READ India. This slow initial progress caused significant stress and strain for the team. Thankfully we have caring relationships with each other that allowed us to talk openly about the stress, but the reality is this is hard work. The talented IBMers who are selected for #ibmcsc are from all different backgrounds: skills, work experiences, countries, cultures, languages, functions. You name it, we’re different.

As each day passed and we still weren’t concrete on our actions, I would try to share ideas and options with my colleagues. But the reality was it was a theoretical discussion. “If it’s this, then we’ll do that.” But no matter what we hoped to do, there was only one way forward, and that was to have faith and walk the path a bit with our NGO leaders. We had to understand the journey they are on in order to provide them with outside perspective. Let the pace of the project move naturally when possible. Again, trust the process.

I'm happy to report that we now have a pile of work ahead of us to deliver our commitments, and the process unfolded as designed. It usually does.

#cscin38