Trusting the Process: What Steve Jobs, Uncertain Careers and Life Detours Teach Us About Purpose

Navigating the unknown after loss, graduation, or a career pivot—why letting go of the plan might just lead you to where you belong.

Searching through old notepads this morning, I stumbled across some scrawled notes from Steve Jobs’ now-legendary graduation speech to Stanford University students. His “connecting the dots” advice has become a well-worn, much-quoted piece of life wisdom, but it still carries weight—especially when you're standing at a crossroads, unsure where the next step will take you.

I’ve been thinking a lot about life paths recently. Working with a group of Year 13 girls made me acutely aware of how stressful that final year of school can be. The future’s speeding towards them, and the pressure to have life all mapped out is real. My recently graduated, gorgeous niece, Chessie—fresh back from adventuring in Central America—is now wrestling with the sobering challenge of discovering her future career. So many options, yet only a handful feel within reach. What to do, where to start?

As I try to wrap my head around what’s happened to our family and tentatively step towards our own unknown future, I find myself returning to the words of one of my old university professors. When faced with uncharted terrain, he’d remind us to “trust the process”.

Is that what we should do—trust the process? Take one step forward and let life unfold? There’s a certain comfort in that idea, and for those Year 13 girls and new graduates, I think it’s as sound advice as any: just start. Choose somewhere to study. Pick a course—any course. Get a job—any job. Move forward from there. Don’t waste time agonising over whether those first steps are the "right" ones. Hop on board and see what unfolds. What works? What doesn’t? Which parts of that first job or course light you up, and which bits feel like pulling teeth? Your post-school years and twenties are for gathering information—about yourself, your values, your skills and the kind of life you want to build.

As Steve Jobs put it in that famous speech:

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

Jobs knew a thing or two about winding, uncertain paths. He famously dropped out of college, but stayed on campus and started attending classes that caught his eye—one of which was calligraphy. At the time, it had no practical application to his life, but years later, when designing the first Macintosh computer, that course came flooding back. It shaped Apple’s distinct focus on beautiful typography and elegant design—something that would become core to the brand's identity. “If I had never dropped in on that single course,” Jobs said, “the Mac would never have had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.” At the time, he couldn’t have known it would matter. But later, looking back, the dots connected.

That’s the thing. Trusting the process isn’t about sitting back and hoping for the best. It’s about taking small, deliberate steps with the belief that—even if you don’t know how—they’ll get you somewhere meaningful. And maybe that’s the point. We rarely know where “there” is. We think we do. We plan. But life, in all its glorious unpredictability, tends to laugh in the face of those plans.

The place I find myself in now certainly isn’t one I ever imagined. And while I’ve always believed in being intentional—setting goals, shaping the future, making things happen—I’m now having to do something unfamiliar: surrender to the unknown. To accept that the version of life I was so committed to is no longer possible, and that trusting the process might be the only path left.

At that Year 13 leadership day, I spoke alongside three fantastic women. One enrolled in physiotherapy, switched to commerce. Another couldn’t get into physio, ended up doing law—and later became the physio for a national sports team. The third began as a nurse and became a leading interior designer. I went to Edinburgh to study history and am now doing PhD research in to topics that weren't even talked about when I was an undergrad.

There’s a kind of quiet resilience in being open to change. In not being too wedded to the current plan. Often, it’s the detours that provide the greatest insights and clarify direction. The best lessons come from the wrong turns, the curveballs, the compromises. It’s messy, uncertain, sometimes heartbreaking—but it’s real. This is what real life really is.

So where does that leave me? Honestly, I’m not sure. I had a plan. I’ve had many. I was a mother of three, a wife to a good man. I had my work, my family, my trail runs, coffee dates, late-night laughter. That version of life is gone. So now, I take one step at a time. I trust—when I can—in the Universal Law of Impermanence. And I try, gently, to trust the process, that every inch I move forward takes me somewhere different.