--- title: "Transformation Requires Engagement" description: "Transformation requires engagement. Time is a canvas to contain the unfolding." author: "Rahim Rasul" type: "Article" published: "2018-12-21" thread: "The Field" url: "https://iloveprocess.com/articles/transformation-requires-engagement/" site: "I Love Process" --- # Transformation Requires Engagement _Transformation requires engagement. Time is a canvas to contain the unfolding._ [Cover image: Illustration in red and black: an hourglass on a red table, dark sand running from the top bulb to the bottom] We say that change comes with time. Give it a few years, we tell each other, and things will be different. Many of the changes in my own life did arrive after a long stretch of time, so the saying always seemed true enough. But I’ve come to accept something I once held only as a novel idea: transformation requires engagement. Time is not the essential variable. Engagement is. It happens inside and outside of us, through reflection, observation, curiosity, and refinement. Time only holds the space where that work can show. > Time is a canvas to contain the unfolding. Seeing it this way changed how I approach my own growth. Instead of forcing an approach to manipulate an outcome, I can tune into the process itself. Sustainable growth comes from intentionality and understanding. An obsession with results doesn’t have the stability to build on. [Figure: Two canvases over the same stretch of time: time alone leaves one blank; engagement fills the other, and a line of change rises across it] ## No shortcuts in the thing you love In a domain where you profess a love, why would you ever want a shortcut? Love and passion imply a desire for mastery. Relish the nuance in each of the tiny, overlooked grooves. Stretch your mind to lay out a sequence of progressions that can carry you from here to any set of ambitions, and adjust course whenever you need to. A sound vision requires a prerequisite set of skills, and none of them can be skipped. One way or another, the cost is paid before the demand on us increases. Media coverage loves the exceptions, the overnight success and the lucky break, but those exceptions make up an infinitesimal fraction of all cases. There are no shortcuts. ## A steady amplitude Some of my desires have been stewing for more than twenty years. I’m comfortable stacking time, as long as it’s paired with a consistent level of engagement. The intermittent pulse of achievement is short-sighted. I would rather cultivate an environment where progress is sustained and commonplace: a steady amplitude instead of manic highs and lows. [Figure: Manic highs and lows end about where they began; a line with a small, steady amplitude climbs the whole way and ends far higher] Achievement isn’t a lucky trick shot. It’s an acclimation, a shift into a specific frequency of consciousness and the ability to keep residing there. That takes activation and deactivation, taking things in and releasing them. And it holds only as long as the standards hold. The moment you let go of the key standards, integrity buckles and progress begins to diminish. **Process is a function of the continuous pursuit of an evolving vision.** Commit to the process, and make the standards non-negotiable. ## Count the cost before you declare Knowing this makes me more mindful of the declarations I make about the work I want to pursue. Before I commit, I ask myself one question: *Am I committed to the work this is going to require?* We tend to celebrate two moments, the start and the victory. Everything between them goes unremarked, and that’s where scores of well-intentioned dreams end, shortly after they begin. There is a cost to every choice, and some things cost in ways we haven’t fully considered. [Figure: Fourteen dreams begin at a celebrated start; nearly all end shortly after, in the long unremarked middle, and one reaches the celebrated victory] ## Give it twenty-five years “People tend to overestimate what they can accomplish in the short term and underestimate what they can accomplish in the long term.” I love this quote, and I’ve organized my goals around it. Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach outlines what he calls the 25-Year Framework, and I’ve built a plan for several areas of my life on his approach. [Figure: Over twenty-five years, what we expect is a straight line and what we accomplish is a compounding curve: the plan runs ahead for the first decade, and a little before year twelve the work passes it] Twenty-five years gives me an abundance of room to succeed and to fail while staying the course. So often we swing for the home run without understanding the stakes of that kind of gambling. It breeds unhealthy habits and manic behavior, and it pulls us into a spiral of comparison. The way out is to understand our own unique voice and to appreciate each stage of progression that brings us closer. > Trusting the process goes a lot further than resenting it. ## Faith, rooted in feedback The critical ingredient is faith. How do we believe in the unseen before it reveals itself? What do we root that faith in? I root mine in what engagement keeps revealing. Each success is a wholistic success, and success breeds confidence. Confidence gives us permission to engage fully, without hesitation. --- Time will pass either way. In full engagement, our abilities find their authentic voice.