Patience
I've spoken about how finding your big, burning WHY is vitally important to have. Your WHY keeps your overall actions headed towards your destination. Your WHY allows you to find ways past the obstacles that are sure to fall in front of you along the way.
Simply put, your WHY is vitally important. However, there are many complimentary characteristics that you should strengthen on the road towards your life goal. Patience is one of those characteristics.
But in today's world of instant gratification is patience endangered?
If you are at least as old as me, you might have first got on the internet by using a dial-up modem. My first one was a 28.8K and it was a couple years before I got a computer that had a 56.6K connection.
You remember how long it took to load a simple photo? Long enough that you had to really want it. Hell, now they say 40% of people will leave a website if the page doesn't load within 3 seconds. And don't even get me started on the amount of time was needed to download a 5mb file or a few songs off of Napster.
The thought of watching a streaming movie over the internet was science fiction.
Today that is immediately available. All I need do is click on a D.Tube or Youtube video and it plays right away. Don't want to cook? You can have a hot meal delivered to you in less than 30 minutes. Want to know the answer to something, Google will find it in a few seconds.
This quick or near instant delivery has given rise to what is becoming known as the convenience society. Amazon has done their part to add and then take advantage of this societal change. Now you can get almost anything by the next day and often within 1 or 2 hours if you live in a city where the aptly named Amazon Now is active.
I'm not going to say that all this is the leading cause of the apparent increase in impatience in society, but I think it has helped.
Have you guys heard of the “marshmallow” experiment in which they place a marshmallow in front of young children and tell them that if they don't eat it for 15 minutes they will get another one.
It was found those children that could not wait had lower incomes and worse health than those who could resist the temptation. But did you know that there was another study performed on 13-year-olds where they were offered $140 now or $1,400 in 5 years.
The children that wanted the money now were found to have a 32% greater chance to be convicted of a crime within the next 18 years. Impatient people think in the short term and not of the long-term positive or negative effects of their actions.
Maybe we won't get arrested, but I am sure all of us feel impatient from time to time. I know I do. However, here are some things to remember about the virtue of patience to get us back on track.
Patience is Success
No big goal is achieved overnight. Because it can't be acquired by next-day delivery, a person heading towards success knows that these things take time. That same person probably knows that impatience can create a host of problems, mistakes, and poor outcomes. Often impatience can result in a huge setback.
Take the crypto mindset over the past few months. The rapid rise of the coin market has attracted a majority of people with the “get rich quick” mindset. Basically you could have bought any crypto last summer and seen an enormous return within the next 6 months.
In response, a host of shady and scammy people have come to feast on this easy money. You get the people who did fake ICO's and disappeared with the money. You have Ponzi schemes like bitconnect shoot through the roof before they came crashing down. Basically, it has drawn in everyone looking for a shortcut to success.
The crypto lottery ticket promises money without work. No effort required. Those things hardly ever work out as intended.
Success is a long-term commitment and there will be many times where you have done all you can and the only action left is to wait. Now that the crypto market has leveled off for a few weeks, those seeking the easy money have lost interest.
Those of us with a success mindset and patience appear to be doing nothing, but that is not true. We are fully involved and paying close attention. We might wait at times but during that period we are always looking for our next opportunity to take action.
Patience is Compassion
Without patience, life can be one agitation after another. You will often be annoyed, bad-tempered, and agitated. Being a patient person frees you from these negative thoughts and emotions. It will keep you calm while others would be stressed.
Imagine being in a traffic jam when someone quickly cuts in front of you trying to maneuver between lanes to get ahead. Being in the traffic jam would already be enough to seriously agitate an impatient person, having someone cut in front of them might send them over the top!
A patient person would remain calm and maybe even laugh at the silly person going from this lane to that as he or she knows that all that effort will only gain them mere seconds in the end. The cars are backed up for miles anyway.
My wife and I have two young children, ages 1 and almost 3. Often my young daughter comes into the room (after being told not to) where I am writing and interrupts me. Interruptions as I write often disrupt my train of thought and it can take me time to gain back my writing focus.
I try to keep it in my mind that she does this only out of her love for me. She doesn't do it to ruin my work. So when I remember that she is an innocent child, I banish any irritation building up and think about how fortunate I am to have my beautiful children.
You see, often you can remain patient by envisioning the situation from the other persons point of view. If you go out to grab lunch and the wait becomes excessive, remember that the workers are doing the best they can during the busy lunch rush. Maybe one cooktop has broken or an employee (or two) called in sick. They are not taking a long time to spite you.
Patience is not Procrastination
Remember that patience in achieving your goal is waiting or biding your time while your efforts take hold. The key thing is that you did your part and, for the moment, there is nothing else you can do. That is not procrastination. Procrastination is waiting to do your part of the effort.
In another way, patience is waiting contently as there is absolutely nothing else you can do while procrastination is putting off what you could be doing right now.
Patience is a positive characteristic, procrastination is an excuse to not do something.
Conclusion
Patience can help you succeed on the journey towards your big goal in life. But it also helps in a myriad of other ways too. I mean, who wants to hang around an impatient person who is quick to anger? Is that a person you want to have a relationship with?
Also, if you have patience you are able to think about the big picture and how you are doing so far. This reflection allows you to think over everything and have a deeper understanding of what your next steps could be in your plan.
An impatient person might choose to just do something even if that action causes more harm than anything else.
In the end, patience will get you to where you want to go. And while you are on the way you will head there much happier with far less stress as you will be able to calmly decide the better courses of action to take.
Great article, In my experience I usually understands and observed my surroundings and learning how the world works it gives you an insight of what you're going to do in life.
Patience is really a key to success. Its a great valuable post. Its a great lesson for the steemians. In Steemit success can only be acheived by patience. thanks for sharing.
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Interesting, well, you call it patience, I call it discipline, I think I'm relatively impatient, especially with the speed of the internet and the first things you've described, because I do not have access to things like Amazon, but as for The goals and the results that I set, I tend to be very patient and carefully measure my actions. Putting yourself in the place of others, as you have described, is something very important, not only in the area of patience, but is also part of understanding other people and having empathy.
As Napoleon said, “Dress me slowly, I'm in a hurry.”
Don't misunderstand the points about dial-up, I don't think that we should go back to slow internet or anything like that.
What I meant was to not confuse quick conveniences (perfectly fine) with quick results in a long-term goal.
Dial up. Ugh. Gross. Remember how it used to basically scream and make horrible sounds?
And yeah, patience is basically the only way to accomplish something radical. Ironically, it's usually the fastest way to accomplish something of permanence.
Yeah, I don't even know why all the noise was necessary!
Look at you being a good dad. Im very familiar with that marshmallow story and while I haven't tested it on my toddler per se, I can't imagine any tiny tikes passing on a marshmallow right now.
Also, I hadn't heard the 13 yr old test, but I might be the most patient person I know Today AND I saved when I was a kid, and I still think I would have taken that $140! 😅
I'll leave you with this quote I have on my desk from when I first started trading and investing:
Oh, I think the marshmallow kids were 4 or 5 years old. It takes at least that long before the brain can understand delayed gratification.
Hey, to get 10X your money in just five years is a great investment! Why wouldn't you take that deal?
Ah okay that makes sense, my 3 yr old gets a mermaid barbie this weekend if she goes on the potty all this week. We asked her which mermaid barbie she wants.
The one with the pink hair or the one with the blue hair.
"I want the BLUE hair barbie!" she exclaimed immediately. "......AND the pink hair!"
She may have a shaky understanding of delayed gratification, but she definitely has an abundance mentality!
And I agree.. NOW. I'd take that investment all day... to forever. I just don't think I personally was that mature at 13, I was too busy eating boogers and trying to get my best friends older sister to date me! lol
Damn thing took days! sometimes weeks, i left my computer running all night just to download a damn song! At least electricity is cheaper at night
As long as you are not searching for diseases... i love when i get clients in the clinic saying the most absurd stuff because they read it on doctor Google...
I still don't understand how people even believed in that scheme... camon it was more than obvious! They even had a guy screaming BITCOOONECCT!
Doing nothing? no... i'm doing something, i just dropped 600 bucks (my next 3 months of investments worth) on this dip, next 3 months i'm not buying anything, but i saw this dip as a opportunity and i took it.
With the potential to get in a car crash and get a serious injury plus having to spend money fixing the car...
Well writtent @getonthetrain, i must say i agree with almost everything, the only thing i wanted to add is that even to much patience can be delatarious to someone... there is a balance between patience and impatience IMO, we just need to find it.
Oh, sure. Too much of anything is bad as well. Thanks for pointing that out!
I read you every words. You have such beautiful writing skill.
Yes patience is definitely lacking in today's scenario. People are often looking for short term benefits and are neglecting the long term value. This key difference differentiate a successful person and just an average person.
Thank you for commenting. Certainly those that can be patient have a greater chance for future success.
I remember those dial up internet days. Patience is a virtue that is lacking in modern society, but is vital to meet our goals. Love the post!
Hey, thanks @kp138 - much appreciated!
The marshmallow experiment! Gotta love this video about it.
Anyway, patience is very important and there are tons of studies how self-control is one of the best indicators of success. Everyone has a some self-control, but others deplete it faster. But luckily you can learn to master it to some extent at least. Just knowing about how it affects already helps. :)
Good things come to those who wait.
Just the right time to read this post. I was impatient about my reward earnings since yesterday. I have the exact same set of people up voting my content every now and then.
But I think I need to be patient. Its just 3 months since I joined and I have already made around 50 steem. That's good enough motivation for now.
Hmm, I think you just need to find the time to write some posts more often. It doesn't have to be every day, just a few more per month.
Keeping busy past 2-3 weeks. Will try to write 2 posts a week. Currently I write on Friday nights which gives me enough time to think and search for images and relevant tags.
Patience and Gratitude. I come from a middle class home and I can't help but thank God for everything. Even for the times in life where I could see the world falling apart in front of my eyes. The journey truly is where happiness lies however difficult it may be to see it. @getonthetrain
Good on you - I'm happily content with what I have. That doesn't mean I can't work for more, just that I know I am blessed already.
Yep, I remember those dial up modem days. What was it , Compserve lol
These kids today don't know what patience is unless they went back 20 years to the Internet.
Thank you so much @getonthetrain for this well done Post !!
Thanks, Robert
never thought one day i'd be able to watch movies on computer. or have one at home. or have a phone that i can watch stuff too. wait is this really happening? :)
This is so true and valuable.
My impatience was the main reason for some of the biggest mistakes in my life – and I’ve made many. I attribute almost all of them to impatience, emotional reaction, short-term and irrational thinking. If only I kept cold head, had patience, and endured the unwanted/unpleasant situations without quiting everything in a spur of the moment, I wouldn’t have ruined so many great opportunities / relationships / careers that were part of my life once. I’m trying to learn from my past mistakes, but changing this trait of my personality proves to be a difficult task.
Seems like you have had some great examples of lessons to learn from. We all have areas we need to work on. The big thing is that you have identified such an area. That alone put you far ahead of most people who never even stop to contemplate what they have done wrong.
This advice is really great and interesting. All your examples do really happen and sometimes we fall short and fail to really wait for the real time.
This is the same problem that happen with us here in Uganda. I can wait for the page to start until I get tired. I remember uploading my Dtube videos take even a half day while consuming real data bundles. I almost gave up on my first Dtube video and patience led me to a great reward on that particular day.
Sometimes, I feel like waiting is the only choice I'm remaining with cause I now try to look far and at least make some forecast about what may come later.
Thank you again @getonthetrain for the remainder.
Willing to wait for the DTube upload is a great rxample of patience. You couldn't do anything to make it faster, so your only option was to wait. Well done.
I really appreciated your perspective. I even read it to the end :) In a day when time is one of your most valuable commodities, I find that to be a great compliment! I find patience helps with the kaizen mindset, slow, but constant improvements. I try to change too much at once in my daily routine and it always gets to be too much. It seems good to be so ambitious, but it's really a lack of patience, to try to get to the end goal without all the in-between steps.
Continuous improvement is a great way to get where you want to be in life - and then some! So many people want it now, which is about impossible. So they get bored or tired and give up.