I've realized that the phrase "trust the process" only started working for me when I stopped thinking of "the process" as some external, pre-ordained thing. The process becomes trustworthy when it's MY process, built from feedback loops I understand and can influence. Otherwise it's just blind faith, and I've never been good at that. I need to see the gears turning, even if I don't fully comprehend the machine. My own process always seems to start with elaborate systems and then slowly, painfully, winnow down to the bare minimum – the few levers that actually make a difference. It's embarrassing how long that pruning takes sometimes. But maybe the initial complexity is part of how I convince myself it's worth trying at all.