Process is to learning what digestion is to eating. Content that people make their own is content that can change their lives. To make our work as meaningful as possible we have to allow time for others to process what we’re discussing. This is exactly like the digestion process by which our bodies break down food and make it something we can use.

I played soccer throughout high school and college. During each high school season we’d gather at a teammate’s house the night before the game. The menu was always the same: spaghetti. In addition to building camaraderie, the high carbohydrate fare helped fuel us up to play the next day. Our bodies required approximately 24 hours to digest the pasta and extract the necessary nutrients.

Imagine playing a soccer game immediately after eating three helpings of spaghetti. Not a pretty thought. (Viewers of The Office should have no problem conjuring an image here.) But sadly this is what many educational approaches amount to–a spaghetti feed/soccer game.

Without process we can’t assume any material we present will be relevant to our listeners. The goal of the process phase is to help others take ownership of the content we present. They do so by strengthening their relationship to the content. Through process we can afford participants the opportunity to more deeply understand and internalize the risks of alcohol, for example, resulting in their truly owning their convictions surrounding alcohol use. This ownership can lead to changed action.

Underlying process is the opportunity for abstract, intangible ideas (think “Just say no”) to be more concrete. As ideas become more concrete they become more real. Then they have power to alter our perception.

It’s great to be working with you to promote meaningful, lasting change.

Send an email to andrewfrobinson@aweber.com to subscribe to future newsletters.

A few weeks ago my wife and I were garage saling with our three young daughters. We stopped at a sale near the close of the day. The hosts were visibly exhausted. They had gobs of things left and were vowing to never host a sale again. Desperate to rid themselves of extraneous items, they offered to give us a toy horse. They made the offer, of course, within earshot of our girls who promptly began to beg.

The toy horse was covered with ink markings—tattoos if you will—placed there by an unsupervised, creative child. The hooves were tattered and in process of defecting from the shanks. Our kids were unfazed. A free horse, they thought. What could be better?

Five minutes later the stuffed beast was the sixth passenger in our minivan. Our kids named the horse Shortbread. They converted the playhouse to a stable and harvested grass from the yard for hay. In the days that followed they fed Shortbread oats for breakfast and read him stories before bed.

It struck me how something so simple (and free) can enflame a child’s curiosity and imagination, which are central to learning and growth. The same is true for everyone—from infants to adolescents to mature adults. We flourish in a life space that offers ample room for creative exploration.

Peak under a board that’s been sitting on top of grass for a long time. The grass is discolored, withered, impacted. It’s not healthy. Remove the board and in time the grass will regain its rich color and grow tall (and children just might harvest it to feed to their stuffed horse). In the same way our lives, and the lives of those in whom we are invested, hold more promise of thriving outside the weight of extraneous objects, activities and words that can suffocate our natural, childlike impulse to improvise, imagine and create.