Process vs Product... My First Post
People kept telling me: “you need to start blogging.” Maybe they are truly fascinated by the things that come out of my mouth that they think I should put pen to them. I’m guessing the suggestions also have to do with the search-engine optimization though as the more likely reasoning. Whatever it may be, writing has been on my radar since starting in private practice, and yet, here is my first post.
What took me so long? What should I write about? Will it be good? Cue the flashbacks to grad school, and the anxiety of the written word. Starting – and NOT waiting – was by far the most challenging part. I’ll probably end up researching “writer’s block” to learn more about what the issue is, but my guess is that I fall somewhere around “terrified of what people will think when they read this…” on the anxiety spectrum. But in all of this hemming and hawing, I rarely considered my own advice as foremost (and never took it until now), that I’ve probably said to at least 90% of my clients: it’s all about the process and it’s very much less about the outcome. As a competitive junior athlete, a coach I had used the phrase “the process versus the product.” I didn’t quite get it at the time probably as a result of my limited life perspective. But for one reason or another, it stuck.
In a nutshell, the “process versus the product” is to “focus on the thing that you can control, the steps of the process, and don’t focus on the end result which by and large is out of your control.” So here is the first blog post; I’m in the midst of the process, whatever it is. It’s unclear, but in my control. It did not achieve my goal of determining the overall purpose of the blog. That’s much further along in the process, and much closer to the product. It hasn’t fully formed yet, but some of the anxiety in writing probably was buried in my search for the purpose. Fixating on that search for the purpose will lead to the likely scenario of having put not a single word down on paper, I’ll be upset with myself for not writing anything, and as they say, the rest is history.
This blog will not be one post long. My process: writing, posting, thinking about what to write about next, writing some more, posting some more, and taking it from there. So this was one step in the long process. Product: unknown. That’s okay, and I feel relief. Click here to learn how I can help you or Contact me.