The Process

Being a coach has always helped me with my teaching.  Coaching is something I am very passionate about.  One thing that always comes up is "THE PROCESS."  I often wondered what this meant.  As a player growing up, I had heard it, but never really understood it.  As I have become more experiences, the process has become one of the more important things in my teaching and coaching. 

"THE PROCESS" is all the things you do that lead you to an end result.  In sports, the process is all your practices, your workouts, your mental training, your sacrifices, etc.  It's your plan!  All of these things help make you a better player and help make you a better team.  The process doesn't include your batting average, wins and losses, your ERA or anything.  These things are the end result.  The process helps take care of those things.  If you stick with your process, you will be successful.  People that stray away from it, will falter.  Sticking to it is not easy work.  It is demanding.   It can be monotonous.  At times, it doesn't make sense.  But if you stick to it, the results will take care of themselves.  I tell players all the time that it's all about the process.  And once they begin to believe in it, they begin to slow things down and see success. 

Well to me, the same thing applies to education.  Your end result is to be successful.  In order to do this, you need to stick to the process. 

I tend to refer to the process as a GRIND (and by grind in mean: Get Ready It's A New Day).  Even when you are not at your best, you have to find a way to get things done.  And it can all be a GRIND.  I love referring to this after baseball games.  Win or lose tomorrow is a new day with a new challenge.  Or after a test in class.  Whether you did great of awful on it, tomorrow is a new day.  Even if it's just a bad day, you can always tell yourself it's a new day.  These things happen and if you stick to the process, your end result will be great. 

I think everyone from time to time gets away from it because it doesn't make sense.  There is always a tendency to take the easy way out, or maybe the way you think is best.  You need to trust your educators and coaches.  Believe in the process and understand there will be some bumps in the road.  There will be times things don't work out they way you expect.  There will even be moments where you think your teacher or coach is nuts because they keep referring to this thing call "THE PROCESS."  So in closing, you should talk to your kids about it.  We don't have enough conversations about things like this.  But believe in it.  In the end, everything will work out.