This is something that I have been reminding myself of for a while now and it has been paying off so far. Whenever I’m frustrated and/or annoyed with lack of progress with something, I remind myself of it and to #TrustTheProcess. Some examples of this from my personal experience:

Running and fitness: The way I approached training was the same for a while with minimal or no improvement year on year. I only started seeing a change after I realized that I was putting the same effort in my training sessions rather than pushing myself beyond my comfort zone, having the same unhealthy eating habits assuming that since I train so much, I don’t need to worry about what goes in my body (#TWSS, I know), not incorporating other exercises beyond running in my training because I assumed logging so many junk miles every week is more than enough and so on. In the last year and a half, i worked harder in training, ate cleaner, started doing other workouts and recovering better by sleeping more and by stretching properly. The results? I’ve cut down around 7% of my body fat, lost around 8kgs of weight, got personal best times across all distances (for example, my half marathon PB was just over 1:40 hours, now it’s well under 1:30 hours. 5k was around 22 minutes and now it’s gone under 20 minutes and so on).

Friendships: I used to wear myself thin trying to avoid confrontation and aiming to please people (even ones I hardly knew). I tried to be available all the time and so on, nowadays I am more selective with the people who I spend my time with and the effort I put in maintaining friendships. The golden rule has been: Quality before quantify. People will come and go in your life, but the type of people you surround yourself with can have a major impact on your life, the way you think, your moral (and immoral) decisions, your habits, lifestyle etc. Being with people who appreciate you for who you are and yet be open and comfortable enough with you to correct you when you’re wrong or when you basically f*** up can make a massive difference.

Saving money: Saving money is a challenge for many people, I experimented with different ways, and the best approach has been to transfer a certain amount of money at the start of the month to a bank account that I have very limited access to (this one is in Jordan, and my debit card for it has expired, which means that I literally have to travel to withdraw any $$$ from it!). This has been working out fine in the past few months.

Work challenges: I used to get easily frustrated at work at trivial matters and used to take things quite personally, now I try to see things differently and to see the bigger picture while bein objective. If I am struggling with something, then this means I’m learning and developing with every challenge rather than coasting. It’s still work in progress, but I don’t let things get to me as much now. Had a crappy meeting? Well, you know how to handle it and the people involved better next time. Failed in delivering a project? Learn from the mistakes and use them as learning steps for the next one and so on.

Hope this was relevant and relatable in some way. I haven’t figured it all out, I probably never will, but one strives to improve.