The Process of Life: The Framework That Carried Me Through Every "No"
Everybody wants the highlight. Nobody wants the process.
We live in a world that shows you the championship parade, the launch day, the announcement post — and hides the years of unseen work underneath it. So when your own life feels like all process and no highlight, it's easy to believe something's wrong with you.
Nothing is wrong with you. You're just in the middle of the process. And the middle is where most people quit.
The Process of Life is the framework I built across a decade of professional football — through every team that signed me, every team that released me, and everything that came after. It's not a motivational slogan. It's how I actually got through. And it breaks down into four seasons that every pursuit goes through.
Season 1: The Planting
This is the beginning — the decision, the commitment, the work nobody sees. Planting season feels exciting for about a week. Then it just feels like dirt.
Here's what I learned: what you do in planting season determines everything, and it's also the season with zero applause. Nobody claps for reps at 5 AM. Nobody posts about the fundamentals. The question in planting season isn't "is this working?" It's "am I willing to work without proof that it's working?"
Season 2: The Storm
The storm is the setback — the cut, the injury, the rejection, the door slammed shut. Everybody's storm looks different, but everybody gets one. Usually more than one.
Most people treat the storm as evidence they should quit. I learned to treat it as part of the forecast. If you know the storm is coming — not if but when — it stops being a surprise that breaks you and becomes weather you prepare for. My faith carried me here. I couldn't always see the plan, but I decided the storm wasn't proof there was no plan.
Season 3: The Standing
This is the hardest one, and the one nobody talks about: the season after the storm where nothing is happening. You're not getting worse. You're not visibly getting better. You're just standing — showing up, doing the work, waiting on a harvest with no date attached.
Standing season is where the "keep going" in Keep Going lives. It's not glamorous. It's a discipline. The people who make it aren't the most talented — they're the ones who could stand the longest without a result to show for it.
Season 4: The Harvest
The harvest is real — but it never looks how you drew it up. My harvest wasn't an NFL Pro Bowl. It was two Grey Cup championships in Winnipeg, a city I'd never thought about until football took me there. The harvest came. It just came through a door I didn't know existed.
That's the last piece of the framework: stay open, because the payoff often arrives wearing a different uniform than the one you prayed for.
Using this in your own life
You don't need to play football for this to apply. The layoff is a storm. The new business is a planting. The job search that's dragging into month four is a standing season. Name the season you're in, do the work that season requires, and trust the sequence.
This framework is at the center of everything I do — ShowtimeSpeaks, The Keep Going Podcast, and the player development work I do with young athletes at West Chester University. If it helps you, it's yours.
Keep going.
— Rasheed "Showtime" Bailey