Celebrating the Process – The Work Before the Final Results

Perspective – I have started to realize that it is no accident that I enjoy the tasks and the process of working before the final results, when the final results achieve the intended outcome. The process confronts and challenges the foundations you believe you have set; you feel engaged; the thought process, the emotions it might illicit, the frustrations, the relief, the joy, the changes, and the beautiful accidents.

The work in-between the final results entails taking responsibility for consciously creating goals to achieve, whether it is personal or professional. Each task has a purpose to assist you to achieving the final results. It helps me identify the actions necessary to achieve them by making sure that my behaviour is aligned with the goals that I have set. I tend to take the time to overthink about if the actions that I plan on doing in my personal and professional life will positively or negatively affect the process of achieving a particular final result.

Over the years, I have had the incredible opportunity to work with incredible people on incredible mission driven projects. I have always marveled at how they do their work, the experience they exude, and their level of engagement. I always wondered about their process and their journey before achieving the final result. As a casual observer, I have learned that people are concerned about living purposefully, they work to find that partner, the volunteer opportunity to give back, the spiritual journey, etc. Is it because of the final results that people want to live purposefully, or is it because of the process before the final results that makes people want to live purposefully?

Working on programs or projects that affect youths have provided me with the opportunity to appreciate the process and the journey to achieving an intended final outcome. When I was working as an English teacher, I was able to learn more about how to experience satisfaction in the process, the real time feedback, the discussions and relationships being developed. It also enabled me to create a strategy on how I can do my job well, to be purposeful and enjoy working with individuals I respect and like. In my current position, I am able to continue that journey as I was able to celebrate the achievements of the members in a program I was leading. To have had the opportunity of the process leading to them finishing their training and to celebrate that process, it reminded me of a passage in a book by Bell Hooks All About Love New Visions:

“When we work with love we renew the spirit; that renewal is an act of self-love, it nurtures our growth. It’s not what you do but how you do it”

The process needs to be celebrated more often.