Practicing Patience Bursts the Bubble of “Instant Success”

Patience.

Read this word out loud. How does your body react? Relaxed? Tense? Comfortable? Impossible? Confident? Lacking? It’s defined as “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.”

In my opinion and from personal experience, patience is one of the most prized and coveted strengths on this planet anyone could display, but not everyone possesses. My nature is one of high energy and enthusiasm, excitement, barely contained, that desperately wants to charge forward.  Can you imagine my struggle?  As a result, I draw to myself lessons in patience where I consistently have  opportunities to exercise this aloof power of patience. 😊

Why is patience so precious? Because the cruel truth is, the sweet rewards of hard work and effort don’t happen overnight. No. it’s far from an instantaneous phenomenon that we believe when we see people come into the spotlight like an “overnight success”. Their success has been a journey of ups and downs for years. We’ve missed out on most of their journey!

For anything worth having one must pay the price; and the price is always work, patience, love, self-sacrifice – no paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service. ~ John Burroughs

The daydream of, we want, bam, we get, doesn’t exist! That would be way too easy. There would be no challenge, no struggle. We wouldn’t have doubts or insecurities that challenged our faith when our efforts seemed to be getting us nowhere fast and feeling doubtful our efforts would ever pay off. We would never have the opportunity to face our fears, learn from our mistakes and reach new heights of our character and capabilities that wouldn’t have been revealed without working through difficulty.

A rich and multi-dimensional life is a journey. Getting all that we want, too soon, skips the lessons of perseverance and grit. Patience is learned and improved  as we grow in new pursuits and adventures. Patience is part of the process, not the end- result.

Patience helps us be kind to ourselves when we’ve taken self- inventory and choose a new behavior, action or reaction that needs improvement. It helps us take one day at a time because many times, our desire or need to behave differently, right now, fuels our urgency to see results immediately. Without patience we become desperate for instantaneous change and when it doesn’t happen, we can easily fall into negative self-talk and feel like a failure believing there’s something we’re doing wrong and we’ll never get to realize our dreams. We are naïve’ thinking we should be much farther along with our goals than where we’re at present day.

Hey, be gentle with yourself! Instant change just doesn’t happen in real life. It’s a lie we’re told and, unfortunately, we believe it. Instant change is against the laws of nature. Take a look around. All that is beautiful in nature takes time and goes through many stages, and challenges, to reach its magnificence. The beauty and wonder like a delicate butterfly, a sturdy oak tree take time, and, on a grand scale, the awesomeness of the Grand Canyon which began forming 17 million years ago. OK, that is an extreme example but my point is, what is wonderful and special takes time.

Practicing patience, by anticipating an investment of time, begins to feel like a reassuring pat on our hand that says we’re on the right path and to stay the course. It slowly urges us to let go of needing instantaneous change. It’s an unfair and unrealistic expectation. Most important, it will cause more pain than necessary until we accept change is a steady, slow, work in process.

All that is good and wonderful in life is a result of struggle and growth, and we’re called to remain steadfast that we will reap all the good of what we sow, in good time!

Right now, with covid19, we are practicing patience because we’re doing what is right to stop the spread, even though it’s so very, very hard.

Keep it Simple,
Just Teri