Achieving success in your personal and professional life comes when you set aside goals and focus on developing good habits, as these quotes on trusting the process highlight.
While setting your sights on a specific goal can be motivating, applying your energy to ongoing processes is a surefire method to achieve your ambitions.
In this article, we’ll explore the top 100 process quotes that can inspire you to rethink how you approach and overcome challenges in life.
The best quotes on trusting the process
Thinkers and philosophers have long been interested in how processes can be used to achieve better outcomes.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote extensively on what he called the Method, which formed the foundation of his approach to philosophy.
More recently, methodology and the analysis of processes have dominated the business world, with management pioneers such as W. Edwards Deming reshaping how companies operate.
The CEO of General Electric, Jack Walsh, took the concept of processes in new directions and transformed how large corporations manufacture at scale.
But processes aren’t just for business; they can also have a huge impact on how people live their daily lives.
The concept has even been commented on by children’s book characters, with Winnie the Pooh and other popular characters sharing insights into effective processes.
Read on, and we’ll cover the best quotes on trusting the process from these and many more iconic and influential thinkers.
1. “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”
– W. Edwards Deming
2. “So the single most vital step on your journey towards enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind.”
– Eckhart Tolle
3. “Taking a shortcut isn't always profitable, doing the right thing may take longer but just trust the process, your reward is sure!”
– Hopal Green
4. “Hold the Vision…drop the excuses…remember your why. Swerve around obstacles…trust the process. Happiness and success will find you.”
– Karen Salmansohn
5. “Transformation is a process, and as life happens, there are tons of ups and downs. It’s a journey of discovery—there are moments on mountaintops and moments in deep valleys of despair.”
– Rick Warren
6. “It is more important to go slow and gain the lessons you need along the journey than to rush the process and arrive at your destination empty.”
– Germany Kent
7. “Sometimes life doesn’t make sense. Sometimes there is no good reason for the events that take place. But most times, you’ll realize it will all make sense for a much better reason, if you’re patient enough to wait.”
– Brittany Burgunder
8. “You are allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress.”
– Sophia Bush
9. “Wherever you are right now, let it teach you something. Be kind to yourself on the journey and in the process of who you are becoming.”
– Morgan Harper Nichols
10. “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
– Marie Curie
11. “Excellent firms don't believe in excellence – only in constant improvement and constant change.”
– Tom Peters
12. “Living is not easy, but the opportunity to do so is a blessing beyond understanding. In the process of living, we will meet struggles that will cause us to suffer and to experience pain.”
– L. Lionel Kendrick
13. “Excellence is a continuous process and not an accident.”
– Abdul Kalam
14. “Everything is coming together perfectly, even though it looks as if some things are not. Trust in the process you are now going through.”
– Neale Donald Walsch
15. “Trust the process, one day at a time! What’s for you is for you and no one can stop that!”
– Tony Gaskins
16. “Trying harder makes the resistance more. It’s letting go of the cars that makes it less. It’s trusting the process. It’s trusting the stream. It’s trusting that you have an inner being that is calling you toward it.”
– Abraham Hicks
17. “Slow down. Calm down. Don't worry. Don't hurry. Trust the process.”
– Alexandra Stoddard
18. “The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it.”
– Arnold Henry Glasow
19. “Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.”
– Rumi
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20. “Everything happening around me is very random. I am enjoying the phase, as the journey is far more enjoyable than the destination.”
– Sushant Singh Rajput
21. “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”
– Jimmy Dean
22. “Trust the process… The Universe Knows What She’s Doing.”
– Anna-Thea
23. “Skill in any performance whether it be in sports in playing the piano in conversation or in selling merchandise consists not in painfully and consciously thinking out each action as it is performed but in relaxing and letting the job do itself through you.”
– Maxwell Maltz
24. “Trust your journey, trust the process, raise your energy and the right people will come into your life.”
– Steven Aitchison
25. “Instead of wondering where your next vacation is, maybe you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from.”
– Seth Godin
26. “When you feel restless, not knowing what’s next… you are about to give birth to a new creation, a new you. You’re expanding. Your soul knows what it’s doing. Trust in the process.”
– Unknown
27. “Commit to the healing path and trust the process.”
– Rosenna Bakari
28. “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”
– Maria Robinson
29. “I don’t know where it’s coming from, or when it’s coming, but it is coming. Please have faith and patience. Trust the time gap…what you seek is making its way towards you now.”
– Karen Salmansohn
30. “I was taught the way of progress is neither swift nor easy.”
– Marie Curie
31. “Forget the competition and go at your own pace. Your only contest is with yourself.”
– William Zinsser
32. “The most dangerous risk of all – the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.”
– Randy Komisar
33. “When you have done all you can do, leave it alone. It’s not in your control. Trust the process.”
– Germany Kent
34. “Patience does not mean to passively endure, it means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process.”
– Elif Shafak
35. “In this game, everyone needs a break to refuel, recharge, and jump back in full throttle.”
– Helen Edwards
36. “Trust in the process you are now experiencing. Life is on your side. It is showing that to you now, though you may not be able to see it clearly at this time.”
– Neale Donald Walsch
37. “I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.”
– Gilda Radner
38. “Excellence is a continuous process and not an accident.”
– A.P. J. Abdul Kalam
39. “I release the past with ease and trust in the process of life.”
– Louise Hay
40. “Relax. Don’t rush. Don’t force. Don’t stress. Let things happen, trust the process, and try to enjoy the ride.”
– Lori Deschene
41. “There are times in our lives it feels like failure. It seems as if we are falling but we really are flying… Have faith… Trust the process.”
– April Peerless
42. “Always remember this! Grapes must be crushed to make wine. Diamonds form under pressure. Olives are pressed to release oil. Seeds grow in darkness. Whenever you feel crushed, under pressure, pressed, or in darkness, you’re in a powerful place of transformation. Trust the process.”
– Unknown
43. “Why are you trying so hard to fit in, when you’re born to stand out.”
– Oliver James
44. “Love is the spirit that motivates the artist’s journey.”
– Eric Maisel
45. “Your life won’t change in a day, week or month. Be patient. It takes time.”
– Gymaholic
46. “You know how if you plant seeds it takes time for the fruits of the seeds to push up through the ground’s surface? Same goes for the changes you want to manifest—they take time to see. So seeing isn’t believing, seeding is believing. What you seed is what you get. If you seed positive thoughts and habits, success will eventually blossom for you.”
– Karen Salmansohn
47. “Everybody wants the platform but nobody wants the process.”
– Pastor John Gray
48. “Playful arising is authorized by both risk and trust in the process and in oneself. To be truly playful and improvisational, one must not look for results.”
– Joshua L. Goldberg
49. “What we are waiting for is not as important as what happens to us while we are waiting.”
– Mandy Hale
50. “Trust your journey, trust the process, raise your energy and the right people will come into your life.”
– Steven Aitchison
51. “Stay positive, Take a deep breath, keep moving forward and don’t look back. Everything is working out for your highest good. Embrace and trust the process.”
– Unknown
52. “Your life isn’t an accident. You have a destiny—one that only you can complete.”
– Rick Warren
53. “Trust the process and bet on yourself.”
– Unknown
54. “Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.”
– Moliere
55. “Strength comes from choosing to fully trust, pray, and praise. Our circumstances may not change, but in the process we change.”
– Charles R. Swindoll
56. “Be brave. Let go. Trust the process. Allow the universe to reveal its beautiful plan.”
– Amy Atherton
57. “If we have faith, a door will open for us, not perhaps one that we ourselves would ever have thought of, but one that will ultimately prove good for us.”
– A. J. Cronin
58. “Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.”
– Henri Frederic Amiel
59. “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
– E.B. White
60. “An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.”
– Jack Welch
61. “It's hard to beat a person that never gives up.”
– Babe Ruth
62. “Nothing worth having comes easy. Trust the process.”
– Napz Cherub Pellazo
63. “Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”
– Aristotle
64. “Trust the timing of your life. Keep focusing on putting one foot in front of the other, be kind, and follow your heart. Doors will open effortlessly, but first, you have to be ready to walk through.”
– Brittany Burgunder
65. “Successful people just do the things that seem to make no difference in the act of doing them and they do them over and over and over until the compound effect kicks in.”
– Jeff Olson
66. “The Christmas presents once opened are Not So Much Fun as they were while we were in the process of examining, lifting, shaking, thinking about, and opening them.”
– Benjamin Hoff
67. “Stay focused on the dream, work hard, and trust the process.”
– Susan Ballinger
68. “Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy.”
– Saadi Shirazi
69. “Sometimes, when something doesn’t work out as you wanted, there’s something better coming your way. Although it’s difficult to believe in ‘something better’ from where you stand, sometimes, redirection is a helpful intervention, leading you away from problems you could not predict and towards benefits you could not imagine. Sometimes, mistakes lead you to lessons learned and growth gained. All of which will help you to become more and get more than you might have become and gotten otherwise.”
– Karen Salmansohn
70. “Quality is not an act, it is a habit.”
– Aristotle
71. “Enjoy the journey and try to get better every day. And don’t lose the passion and the love for what you do.”
– Nadia Comaneci
72. “Today, I will go with the flow of life and trust the process. I will not stress over things I can’t control.”
– Unknown
73. “Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
74. “The waiting. The meantime. The in-between. It all serves a purpose. Trust your process, even the delays and detours.”
– Unknown
75. “Success is a poor teacher. We learn the most about ourselves when we fail, so don’t be afraid of failing. Failing is part of the process of success. You cannot have success without failure.”
– Robert T. Kiyosaki
76. “Trust in the process as you journey through life—in all it’s emotional highs and lows—knowing each moment is sacred and that your soul is safe.”
– Anna-Thea
77. “Sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a man in the process of changing.”
– Branson Sanderson
78. “Trust the process. Six months from now, you can be in an entirely different place—emotionally, physically, spiritually, monetarily.”
– Unknown
79. “So trust the process of your life unfolding, and know with certainty, through the peaks and valleys of your journey, that your soul rests safe and secure in the arms of God.”
– Dan Millman
80. “I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow, it will split in two.”
– Jacob A. Riis
81. “If you really wanna fly, learn to befriend the winds.”
– Curtis Tyrone Jones
82. “The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.”
– Carl Rogers
83. “Life is a journey to be experienced, not a problem to be solved.”
– Winnie the Pooh
84. “As you learn to Trust yourself something miraculous happens. You begin to trust the process you are living and the miracles life brings!”
– Iyanla Vanzant
85. “It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters in the end.”
– Ernest Hemingway
86. “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”
– Maria Robinson
87. “If I let go of who I am I become who I might be”
– Lao Tzu
88. “Start now. Start where you are. Start with fear. Start with pain. Start with doubt. Start with hands shaking, start with voice trembling, but start and don’t stop. Start where you are with what you have. Just… Start.”
– Unknown
89. “Gains without failure is impossible.”
– Kierra C.T. Banks
90. “A process cannot be understood by stopping it. Understanding must move with the flow of the process, must join it and flow with it.”
– Frank Herbert
91. “Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process.”
– Elif Shafak
92. “Just be calm and trust the process.”
– Monariya
93. “Don’t ever stop believing in your own personal transformation. It is still happening even on the days you may not realize it or feel like it.”
– Lalah Delia
94. “Not all those who wander are lost.”
– J.R.R. Tolkien
95. “We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.”
– Warren Buffett
96. “You are not defined by your past. Trust your potential. Trust the process.”
– Unknown
97. “Professionals stick to the schedule; amateurs let life get in the way.”
– James Clear
98. “Life is not what it’s supposed to be—it’s what it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.”
– Virginia Satir
99. “A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song”
– Chinese proverb
100. “If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.”
– Michelangelo
Final thoughts on the best trust the process quotes
These top 100 process quotes offer a unique insight into the mindset for success, from classic observations by ancient philosophers to modern day gurus.
While many people make the mistake of focusing on specific goals, the lessons learned from these quotes is that success and accomplishments are part of a continual learning process.
If you’re struggling to achieve professional ambitions or want to improve your health, these quotes on trusting the process will set you on the right path.