Welcome to the Daily Quote, the podcast designed to kickstart your day in a positive way. I'm your host, Andrew McGivern and this episode is brought to you by the Great News podcast, because good news should be heard and the link is right here in the show notes.
Today's quote has no confirmed original author and it seems that a lot of modern inspiring quotes are unattributed. Somebody must have said it first but there is no documentation. The quote is:
”Trust the process, even when it seems like it's not processing.”
There's a moment that almost everyone building something encounters. You're doing the work. You're showing up consistently. You're following the process you believe in. And nothing appears to be happening. The numbers aren't moving. The results aren't arriving. The gap between effort and outcome feels wider than it should, and the quiet, corrosive voice of doubt starts asking whether the process is actually working at all.That moment is precisely what this quote is written for.Here's what's worth understanding about how processes actually work. Progress is almost never linear. It is almost always invisible before it becomes obvious. The bamboo plant spends its first four years growing an underground root system so extensive that when it finally breaks the surface, it can grow 90 feet in five weeks. For four years with nothing visible. Then everything, seemingly at once. Not because nothing was happening. Because everything was happening underground, where no one could see it.The Philadelphia 76ers basketball team understood this more publicly than most. In 2013 they made the deliberate decision to rebuild, trading away established players, accepting years of losses, accumulating draft picks and developing young talent. From the outside it looked like failure. Season after season of losing records. Fans frustrated. Critics dismissive. The team's response was a phrase that became a cultural slogan far beyond basketball: trust the process. What looked like stagnation was in fact construction, careful, patient, invisible construction. The team that emerged from that process became one of the most formidable in the league.Trusting the process means believing that growth is taking place behind the scenes even when there is no visible movement present. It is the discipline of staying committed to the work when the work isn't yet showing up in the results. And it is perhaps the hardest discipline of all, because the absence of visible progress feels exactly the same as the absence of actual progress. But they are not the same thing. Not even close. The process is processing. Even when, especially when, it seems like it isn't.So here's the question: Where in your life right now are you close to abandoning a process, not because it's wrong, but because the results haven't arrived yet on your schedule?Because the bamboo doesn't break the surface in year two. The team doesn't contend in year one of the rebuild. The work you're putting in today may not show up until a season you can't yet see.Stay in it. The process is processing. Even when it seems like it isn't.That's it for today. I'm Andrew McGivern and I'll see you in the next one with another Daily Quote.
