Chapter 16: Patient People

Dear reader,

Hello again! Dance with me you wonderful person :D. You don't know how to dance? I'll teach you in a later blog post :P

In three weeks time my family will be jetting off to Cuba. The resort is a paradise: the beach could be a desktop background; there will be parties, food, historical sites and a thousand activities to do during the day and night. My papa booked the holiday at the start of the year and you can probably imagine that we are all looking forward to it.

This made me ponder about the importance of waiting for things and the weaknesses of doing so too.
As you have probably heard before, there is a saying that goes: "Good things come for those who wait" but I also feel that "bad things come to those who wait too long".

It is natural for people to lose patience with things. In a world of technology, the modern world, where everything is instantaneous, like text messaging, emails, even deliveries to your door and telephone calls, high speed broadband: we humans have a reason to be impatient. We want instant results.


I have met a lot of impatient people. You hear them at the train stations when their train is delayed or cancelled. You see them at work, counting down and looking at the clock hoping it will tick just a little bit faster or wishing for Saturday when it's only Tuesday. What I have found with waiting is that it lowers your state of perception. The person who is waiting gives his power away to what he is waiting for. The person is saying that he will give up who he is until he hears from what he is waiting for. These are the kind of people who say to themselves subconsciously: I will feel happy when it is home time, but up to that point the world gets to enjoy me complaining about it.

Thus, I find that impatient people are missing out on happiness in the moment because they are building their happiness around the time of the day, or the times of the year. Indeed logical lives, while organized, are usually unfulfilled because they lack that freedom and spontaneity. It is like saying to yourself there are a thousand steps that I have to climb to finish my journey, instead of saying "every journey starts with a single step, I don't know where it's going to take me."

The truth is, the more that you wait for something, the more likely that you will be disappointed by it. It's human nature. Of course I want to distinguish "longing" from "impatience". As when you "long" for something, you are in need of it. Like missing my loved one right now; I miss her very much. Thus when finally receiving it, the need is always going to be bliss for you.

Impatience on the other hand, is about wanting it. We get impatient because we want results faster and so if we wait for a package that we want from Amazon, what do we do when it doesn't arrive? We blame the delivery service, we moan about the website. If you make your life a waiting game the item never looks like it does in your mind. You've invested so much into it you make it look far greater than it really is. Waiting ultimately makes you disappointed.

So how do we counter this?

1.  Forget: From my personal experience the things I am waiting for arrive in their best light when I have forgotten about them. Think about your daily work routine. If you are working from 9am to 5:30pm, and you lose track of time and then you look at the clock and find that you have only 5 minutes left, how do you feel? Amazing. Why? It's because all of that work you've put into today felt like nothing and it was easy. Work is not a struggle when you focus on the work and not the reward at the end.
2. Thrill: fill your life with more distractions so that all of these things that you have to wait for in your life, come all at once. If you are applying for jobs and you sit at your email inbox refreshing the page, you will become more self doubting as time goes on, and yet if you go out, or work on yourself and your talents, you'll find that the things you are waiting for are not "big breaks" but "bonuses". You'll feel like it's magic, when everything falls into your lap, where in reality you have simply changed your state of perception to one which is stronger and assumes success rather than something weaker which is begging for results.
3. Be the difference: everyone is impatient because things won't work faster, or things are not automatic--so why don't you it for them? Instead of groaning about the train being cancelled, talk to someone in the same situation and brighten their days (not by mutually complaining :P). If you are waiting for something on a clock, do something that will take your mind off it until you are not waiting for it at all. 

:D There we are, and be patient for that blog on dancing. I can assure you it will be worth the wait. But I don't want you to wait. You get me? :D

Haha. Until next time--don't wait for anything in life--be patient :), live your life.