Worth the Wait

How easy it is to get impatient when things don’t happen as a quickly as we want them to.

This InnerWeather platform, which has been an important, all-consuming project for close to 1.5 years now, suddenly had to take a step backward due to other demands. Well, at least it felt as if I was going backward, but I was really just standing still. Waiting. As I was waiting, my momentum changed, then the motivation suffered as opportunities only came in tiny windows. And I went into a rare panic. I had to surrender to wait.

I met with a friend, an early supporter and subscriber to InnerWeather. He reads everything I send out, and he recently told me how much he enjoys it, “but where are you going with it?” he finished.
Ah, yes. I thought I had learned a long time ago to be patient with myself. What I am trying to accomplish has to do with service, and it is not about me, right? My supporters are also impatiently waiting to see what happens next. It’s not enough that I have a vision and a plan and am patient with myself, if the work involves others who come to expect something from me, I can’t sit around and wait for motivation.

Patience took on a new meaning and demanded the next spot of InnerWeather’s offerings. Because it is not only my understanding of patience that changed. Patience itself has changed.

Once a virtue, patience has lost its status as part of the foundation describing a person of moral excellence and great character. Patience is no longer valued as something to strive for or learn, but rather has become the enemy of today’s fast-paced world. Much of our current culture favors speed and fast results. There is a not a subject we cannot find a guide to conquer in 30 days or less on the Internet. However, overnight success is usually not achieved overnight. Rather, years of dedicated effort may suddenly show visible results or be rewarded in ways that can only be perceived as sudden luck to the outside observer.

The definition of patience is the capacity to endure hardship, difficulty, or inconvenience without complaint, but patience no longer represents a willingness to endure suffering, but a powerful tool. Once a negative, now a positive, the definition must change.
Patience itself has become the skill.

Patience is a sibling of time. These days most of us complain in broad general sweeps that there is not enough time. How we use our time determines how much we perceive we have of it, and how well we allow patience to assist us in making time matter. Some things just take time.
It’s been said that if we don’t have enough time, we don’t have priorities. Which is perhaps just another word for patience?

Part of developing patience is to strive for better results, a willingness to wait in exchange for higher quality. That doesn’t only apply to the work we do, but the things we buy, things we make, and things we say.

Just stepping back for a moment and wait when there is an urge to say or do something, or an urgency of any sort comes over us, can bring a fresh perspective that leaves us relieved that we did not act on our sudden impulse.

Any journey consists of valley and peaks, fast tracks and slow stretches. Sometimes it is while in the valley or on the slow stretch the best ideas present themselves. Delays can also be blessings.

Patience is a form of surrender. It is followed by trust, another important element in developing patience. Trusting that things will turn out ok allows us to hold off judging too quickly, giving up too soon, or giving in to emotional breakdowns. It means to see things through even when we can’t see the final picture yet, but we still keep working towards it.

Patience has power. Lately, it seems fewer and fewer people master it, or even continually engage in it, and yet all we have to do to claim patience as a tool of our own, is to choose to wait or accept waiting when we must with a good attitude.
Wait for insights, wait for time to heal, wait for the right moment, wait for the heat to go down, wait for more substance, wait for the right person, and so on.

Once we learn to use patience to our advantage, motivation steps up, and we magically also know exactly when the time is right and when to act. That is the definition of success: when preparation meets opportunity. Which takes patience.