Trust the Process
DAY 1 of October 2025 30-Day Art Challenge (Marie-Louise Bahnson)
The biggest shift often comes when you stop forcing outcomes and start letting intuition lead. Some days the work flows; others, it resists. But every mark adds up to growth.
There’s a moment in every creative journey where effort alone stops working.
You show up. You try harder. You push. And somehow, the work feels tighter, further away, like the more you force it, the more it resists. This is often the point where the biggest shift is waiting to happen.
Trusting the process isn’t passive. It’s not about giving up or doing less. It’s about learning when to step back, soften your grip, and let intuition take the lead.
When Flow Comes — and When It Doesn’t
Some days, the work flows effortlessly. Colours land where they’re meant to. Decisions feel obvious. Time disappears. Other days, nothing settles. Every mark feels wrong. Doubt creeps in, whispering that you’ve lost something; momentum, skill, or confidence.
But resistance isn’t failure. It’s part of the rhythm.
Creative work isn’t linear. Growth doesn’t happen in a straight line, and progress isn’t always visible in the moment. The days that feel unproductive are often the ones quietly teaching you patience, restraint, or trust. They’re asking you to listen rather than control.
Letting Intuition Lead
Intuition isn’t something you find, it’s something you remember how to hear.
It grows through repetition. Through showing up even when the outcome is unclear. Through making choices without needing to justify them immediately. Over time, intuition becomes a kind of internal compass, guiding you toward work that feels honest rather than impressive.
When you trust the process, you allow space for discovery. You stop demanding that each piece prove something. Instead, you let the work reveal what it wants to become.
Every Mark Matters
It’s easy to dismiss the small moments; the discarded sketches, the paintings that never leave the studio, the experiments that don’t quite land. But every mark adds up.
Each decision trains your eye. Each “mistake” sharpens your understanding. Each unfinished idea leaves behind a trace of learning that informs the next one.
Growth is cumulative, even when it’s quiet.
The process doesn’t reward urgency; it rewards consistency. Showing up again and again builds a relationship with your work, one based on trust rather than expectation.
Releasing the Outcome
When the focus shifts from outcome to engagement, something changes.
You become more present. More curious. Less afraid of getting it wrong. And paradoxically, the work often becomes stronger, more alive when it’s no longer being pushed toward a predetermined result.
Trusting the process means accepting uncertainty. It means allowing the work to surprise you. It means understanding that clarity often arrives after movement, not before.
The Long View
Creative practice is a long conversation, not a single statement.
Some days will feel expansive. Others will feel heavy or slow. Both are necessary. Both are part of the same unfolding.
When you trust the process, you stop measuring success by immediate outcomes and start recognising it in subtle shifts; a stronger instinct, a deeper confidence, a quieter mind.
So keep going. Keep making marks. Keep listening.
Even when it doesn’t feel like it, the work is working on you.
