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- A Few Words About Process What you gonna to do, baby? How you doing? What's happening? Welcome to your Wednesday, another episode of WANZOLOGY!!! I am your host, The Wanz, hoping that you are enjoying your existence and not stressing out too badly because yeah, anybody who thought that life would be easy is completely and totally mistaken. Anybody who thought that you could just skate on by and not be noticed and not have a care in the world, oh, oh, I'm so sorry, that's incorrect!! Oh my gosh!! Back in the day, we used to say, “It's getting hectic, it's getting wild, it's getting hectic, it's getting wild!” And man, I can totally relate. So you ever have that feeling that you were just going and going and going and going here, going there, doing this and doing that, and it's like, man, you know, from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM you're just balls to the wall. Movin’!! Groovin’!! You know what I mean? Some people I know have weeks like that. They work like 12 days in a row, 16 hours a day and I'm just like, “Yeah, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, but you better get it while you can. 'cause it could be worse.” Now they're working and still trying to quote unquote ‘manage’ things. They're still trying to exercise some kind of control over their existence. And if you're me, that's kind of, uh, that's kind of the, uh, the main ingredient for a comedy show. I never believe that people believe that they have control over their life. It's always funny to me that they think that because they don't really remember. They don't remember that life goes on regardless of whether you're present or not. It goes on for other people all the time. Just because you aren't there doesn't mean that life isn't happening. And while you are waiting for whatever you're waiting for to come, to go to be or not be, life is happening for someone else and inclusively it's happening to you. It's just a different facet of your life. Facet meaning go to the jewelry store and you look at those precious stones and they have all these edges and flat parts, those are facets, and they catch the light and refract the light in a certain way. And your life is kind of the same way, you are a multifaceted human being. You don't just do one thing. You do many things, sometimes a few things at a time. So to think that you're just all about your job or you're all about driving or you're all about cooking whatever meal you're making or whatever, sorry, that's just kind of what's at the front of the line. The front of the line in your head, but it's not all that you're doing. I wanna talk to you about process. Process I've been told is basically anything that has a beginning and an end. In fact, everything that has a beginning and an end is a process. Now, what that process is depends, but if you started reading a book and then a while later you finished that book, while you were reading that book, you were in the process of reading that book. If you hop outta your spot right now and jump in the car and I need to get some Juju Bees from 7-11, well a trip there after you leave your driveway or wherever your parking lot is or whatever it is, after you leave, you're in process. While you're in process, there are sub-processes that are happening. How fast are you going? How quickly are you stopping? Are you taking your foot off the gas to coast? Are you sure that what you're looking for is gonna be at the store? What if it's not, then what was that your turn you were supposed to just take, you were spacing out. Oh yeah, and then you're at the next light and the person in front of you doesn't realize that's the only color green it turns, yes, you can go!! But then you get to the store and they're there, and you go through the process of taking them from wherever they're displayed up to the counter, and then you go through another process to see how much they are. They're as much as they always are, and you already have your money out because you've bought this before, so you already know how much they cost. Or you're just using your card and it doesn't really matter, you just go through the motions of solidifying and confirming the purchase, and boom, you're out the door, back in the car on your way back to wherever you came from. And when you get there, you park the car and you get out and make sure the car is locked. Get up to the door, turn around and look at the car, make sure that you didn't forget something in the car. And you unlock your door. You go in and close the door, turn the light off, the porch light that is, and boom, that was the process of going to the store to buy you some juju bees. But there were all these little things that happened in between. What most people lose track of is how many other processes are going on while they're focusing on the main or what they think is the main process. Anything that has a beginning and an end is a process. And when I first figured this out and challenged it, I started knocking down the levels of complexity and started taking apart simple things, very simple things. My favorite is brushing my teeth. Perfect, quintessential, non-biased, always consistent process, brushing your teeth. The process could start with you turning on the water in the sink, or you could just grab your brush and the toothpaste. If you use toothpaste, you could push the button if you have one of those fancy electromagnetic vibrating toothbrushes, or you could then turn on the water and get the bristles wet to, uh, accept the toothpaste that you're gonna put on it. You squeeze the toothpaste on, put the tube of toothpaste down, look in the mirror, put the toothbrush in your mouth, and go to town. Now, there are various ways of doing this process. We're at the mid-process level because now the subprocesses of, are you doing your bottom teeth first? Are you doing your insides of your lower teeth first or the insides of your upper teeth first, or digging back in the molars and then going all the way around from right to left, or maybe you're going left to right. Or maybe you're starting on the, the tops of the lower teeth or the bottoms of the upper teeth and going from right to left or left to right. Either way, you provide what you think is maximum coverage liquid has accumulated in your mouth. You spit it out, maybe rinse off the brush, go back over for, you know, just in case you missed a spot with a clean brush. You keep going, you go, you go, you go, you go, and after you're done, you put your hand underneath the faucet and you get a little water in your hand and put it in your mouth, swish it around a little bit. What are you doing? What are you doing? Oh, you're rinsing!! Why? Ah, totally different topic. We won't talk about that. So you're done rinsing and you spit it out, and then you swish the water around with your hands to make sure you didn't leave any residue and you're done process, beginning, middle, end. That's how you know something is a process. An elephant is not a process, but if an elephant is going from one side of a pond. To another side of a pond. That elephant is in process. And if you're watching the elephant like on a TV show or something, you are in process of watching the elephant go through its process, and if you're watching your little nature show with a bowl of popcorn and you're eating the popcorn, well then you're in process of emptying the receptacle that carries the popcorn. And with each handful or morsel that you put into your mouth, you chew and that's another process of actual ingestion of the popcorn and say, uh, the popcorn's really salty, so now it's time to have a sip. If you have a sip of water, is that part of your normal process or is that an add-on? Or did you intentionally put the receptacle holding the water there so that you could see the process of getting the liquid from the glass into your mouth and then setting the glass back down? You see what I mean? Anything that has a beginning and an end is a process, and everything in the middle is part of the process. Now I've gone through all that to give you these two nuggets. It is very, very important that you understand where you are in any given process. 'Cause once you've started, you're in it like brushing your teeth. You start brushing your teeth and it's not like you're gonna stop with only one row inside done, you haven't done anything else. Nope, you gotta finish. Or if you're gonna make some eggs and you've cracked the eggs open and the pan's hot, and you put the eggs in there and it starts cooking, you can't just stop or the eggs will burn. Now, can you, in your magnificent magnifying mind, pick out a process that you remember tying your shoes, putting on your undergarments? Getting dressed. That's another one that's usually like third down the list from brushing your teeth for me. How many processes can you identify while you're in process to listening to this episode of WANZOLOGY? What else are you doing? Are you walking? You just have your earbuds in and you're just sitting in a chair? Maybe you're doing a workout, maybe you're just looking out the window, maybe you're driving, maybe you're riding on public transportation. It doesn't matter. The cool thing about being a human is that we start go through and end hundreds, if not thousands of processes in a given day. Being aware the small processes helps you keep track of the big ones. Once you've started, you're in it, right? But how long are you gonna be in it? Life is a process with many, many phases. Some people look at living like a book. There's that first chapter where you're born and you go through all these chapters and phases and sections and whatever, and then the last page is when you die. Where are you in your process? Have you ever heard that expression about what's on gravestones? Gravestones always have your born year or date and your death year or date, and then there's a dash in between. Where are you in your dash? How long is your dash? What are you doing while you are in your dash? These are questions, ne, they will help you understand the why of your existence. If you ask, why am I doing this? Why am I going to the store? Why am I, why am I wearing these clothes? Why am I wearing these shoes? Why am I ‘fill in the blank’? Why do I, why am I. How should I, how could I? Various ways to investigate a process, but the point is to understand how it started, how far you've gotten into it, so that you have some idea of when you're gonna be heading towards the end of it. And here's the curious thing about living your ‘dash’, you never know. You never know where the end of your dash. How does that affect process? I have found that it is very, very wise to stay out of trying to determine where I am in my life process on any given day, because I'll get hung up on that day and the days that led up to that day. Hours, minutes, seconds that led up to that very moment that I started thinking about this and what happens. I'm distracted from ‘doing’ stuff. Actually heading towards the end of whatever process I happen to be in. So try not to get hung up on ‘I failed’, ‘I made a mistake’, ‘I ruined’, ‘I said the wrong thing’, ‘I did the wrong thing’. For each one of those, there's an opposite, and if you go back over the evidence of your existence, you'll find plenty examples of the opposite. It's in those opposites that you have to remind yourself it's not about how many home runs you have, it's not about how many failures you have or strikeouts if you're using the baseball analogy, it's about average. In a given day, you could say, have 2000 processes. Do you have a 99% success rate of completing every single one of them from the time you swing your legs out of bed and put your feet on the floor to the time you take your feet off the floor and swing your legs back under the covers, when you're done with the day? Why don't you find out? Why don't you investigate all those little processes that inhabit the big process of getting through today? You might be surprised at how many things you're good at, or bad at, or improving upon, letting go of. It's very interesting when you start taking apart as many processes as you can identify, 'cause they're all different, but they work the same beginning, a middle, and an end. Which brings me to the end of this episode. I really appreciate you paying attention at least a little bit, and I hope that you stay healthy, wealthy, and wise until next time, later.