The Process and Caregiving Craziness

A good process produces good results.

Nick Saban

Nick Saban was the head football coach at Alabama (six national championships), LSU (one championship), Michigan State, and the Miami Dolphins.

One of the keys to Saban’s success was what he calls The Process. The strategy is based on Process Thinking, a philosophy emphasizing preparation and hard work over consideration of outcomes or results. It is particularly popular in professional sports.

Practitioners of Process Thinking focus on the present instead of past events or future outcomes, and believe that all of the actions one takes in life, regardless of how trivial they may seem, affect the desired outcome.

Here’s how The Process can impact caregiving and help you ease back from the craziness. For example: When you are feeding a non-communicative mama, it’s easy to let those thoughts about how things used to be (playing with her as a child, being scolded by her as a teenager) and what things may be like in the future (not always good) crowd your mind and make you crazy.

By focusing on the present moment—the bowl, the spoon, the food, mama chewing and swallowing, finishing and cleaning her and the bowl—and NOT losing yourself in the past and future thoughts, you end up feeling a little less crazy. You are more in control of yourself and you. In fact, you are taking care of YOU.

Saban worked with Michigan State University psychology professor Lionel Rosen and broke down complicated tasks like football games—and entire seasons—into smaller, more manageable pieces.

Rosen emphasized that the average football play lasts only seven seconds, so coaches and players should concentrate only on those seconds, take a rest between plays, then do it all over again. As caregivers, we can do much the same thing when approaching a lot of the tasks for which we are responsible.

Thanks to the folks at Wikipedia for their help.