"Trust the process" - they say. But what does that really mean? Do they really understand?
You see the process of attaining excellence in sport - mirrors that of attaining excellence in life.
But what does that really mean - what is the process?
The process you ask - do you really want to know the answer?
The answer is not easy - the answer is not clean and neat - and the answer does not always feel good.
You see the process of becoming excellent in sport is paved with failure, rejection, real blood, real sweat and real tears on the way to victory.
The process in baseball is getting cut your freshman year of high school in front of all of your friends. The sport you love so much just kicked you in the teeth for all to see and made you question how much you love it and how bad to you want to play.
But you see you went to work on the process - you worked harder than anyone else - by yourself that offseason - no one was watching you - no one was cheering you on - but next season you came back stronger than ever and made the team.
This was one small step on the way to pitching in the Division II College World Series. If you look back - that setback was painful - but it was nothing more than fuel for the fire that prepared you for more setbacks, more rejection and ultimately fueled your drive to conquer what was your destiny.
But what are we talking about - baseball? No - as Augie Garrido put it - "what do you think you are f*ing with here. This isn't about some */#* game. This is about our lives!!!"
Your destiny was to become -a great husband - a great father - have a great career and pay it forward because you know how sweet the victory is - all because you got to experience the depths of defeat.
All of this because your parents did not call the coach when he cut you, did not threaten to switch schools because they would not have you on the team, did not try to influence the AD to get the coach fired, did not tell you to switch sports - they did not make excuses or make the road easy to make you feel better - they taught you to rise up - meet your opponent head on.
Through the "process" - you learned to do your very best everyday, you learned the value of a team and how you need others help to accomplish your goals, your learned that when adversity strikes you have to dig deep and want it more than the next guy and you learned that you can learn from every situation to become better.
So. the next time your hear "trust the process" - you have a small glimpse into what the coach is really talking about.
If you want to experience to process - check out out teams High School and Youth.