Patience is not one of my virtues. Living in a microwave world, many of the things that we have in life acquired instantly doesn’t help.
If you view the success stories of many, it appears that they became successful overnight; au contraire mon frere! It takes hard work and perseverance to become successful at anything. What we see many times is simply the end result of much hard work. We see articles titled “Overnight success” and “Instant hit”, but the real truth is deep within the article.

Haste makes waste

Typically I have found, if I do a project without the proper planning, I end up having to do much of it over again. This isn’t to say that some things in life shouldn’t require quick decisions and prompt action. More than not, most things should be like a good stew, taking time to simmer and let all the ingredients work together.

At my age, I feel that a wasted day is one day less that I will have to accomplish a goal. By not taking time to think and have ideas come to me, I tend to chase after ideas that are not well thought out. While I’m at it, I will throw in the word “relaxing”. I’m not good at that either. Combine little patience and not able to relax and you end up with a stress filled life and a nice helping of anxiety. Usually my body lets me know when it needs a break, not physically, but mentally. My body likes to manifest certain aches and pains that tell me, “Hey dude, I’m not enjoying life, and I am going to manifest this X to let you know!”

Chasing after windmills

Like Don Quixote, I am beginning to understand that I tend to chase after windmills.

I seem to be looking for the ever elusive idea or project that seems to elude me. Chasing after it, it seems to be always one step ahead of me, outsmarting me. I have talked to many that have said that their great idea came to them when they weren’t looking. They weren’t out there chasing after it. It was rather serendipitous. Relaxing and having patience are two virtues that I am going to begin trying to achieve. I have chased after these windmills and I keep getting knocked off of my horse.

The harder I work, the behinder I get

This statement seems counterintuitive. I know that multi-tasking has been a buzz word over the past 10 to 20 years, but can anyone really multi-task and do an effective job? There are those that say, the super competent only do one thing at a time, so as to limit multi-tasking to maximize productivity. Multi-task thinking also is part of my ‘no patience, no relaxing’ mentality as well. I want to get much accomplished at the end of each day, so I start multiple projects. At the end of the day, I simply have multiple unfinished projects. There isn’t much of a satisfaction feeling in that.

If you can relate to any of this, I challenge you to start to learn to relax. Allow time for creative thought and then slowly build a good foundation on those creative ideas that do come to you. Patience is a virtue that will help you build whatever that goal is that you have or that you discover.