The Patience Problem

October 27th 2017

Patience is a virtue…

With the rise of social media and the digital age, where everything is at your fingertips, more and more people are losing the ability to truly value patience. We are in a society ruled by immediate gratification. People want it fast, easy, and now. I have found that this ever growing patience problem has caused more and more people to miss out on their true potential because they are unwilling to work their way up to it.

For example, I have has friends who have given up writing, art, music, dance, and a wide variety of other artistic and creative endeavors simply because they did not feel they were progressing in the way they wanted to. We have become brainwashed by the young stars who skyrocket on social media without warning, and blame our own perceived inadequacy as to why we can’t do the same; then we quit. We give up on the things that make us happy because they are not immediately paying off.

You could be working towards a pay raise, spending extra time doing your best work, but if the pay raise is taking too long, you slack, become apathetic, and give up, returning to mediocrity. You could have started your blog over a year ago and only amassed about 25 followers, then you begin to write less because you feel like you’re screaming into the void, then you post once a month just when you feel like you have to.

These practices are counterproductive!  You should work hard at your job because you want to, not because you feel you must in order to get the raise. And just because the raise doesn’t come as quickly as you feel it should, doesn’t mean you should return to mediocre work! You’ll only separate yourself from that raise even more!

And if you don’t think you’re blog is getting enough views and traction, you should be posting MORE not less. By giving up on your goals because they are not immediately gratifying, all you are doing is separating yourself from your desire outcome.

I think the most clear example of this is New Years Resolutions. When you hear New Years Resolution, what do you think of? Well, I don’t know about you, but I usually think of people saying they are going to work out every day and lose _____ amount of weight. I have a gym that I pass on my way home from work every day and my favorite time of year to look through the windows is January. Right at the start of the new year, there is not an empty machine to be seen. People of all shapes and sizes are kicking but and filled with determination.

Then as February approaches, the amount of gym goers starts to dwindle, until finally you are back at the same 10 or so people who you normally see when you drive passed. Why is that? The patience problem. People think that doing 20 crunches will give you abs and eating a salad instead of fries a few times will help you shed weight like nobody’s business. When they don’t see the scale changing as quickly as they want to, they get lazy, and quit.

So, how do we solve this patience problem? Well, when I am getting down about my blog view count or a number of other things pertaining to my passions, I try to remember why I started. I didn’t start a blog to get famous, I started one because I’ve loved to write my whole life and I wanted to share that with whoever would choose to read. Do I get impatient at times and want to skip a posting day just because I don’t feel like anyone will notice? Heck yeah. I almost did that today, but I remember that I remain consistent on my blog because it is something that is important to me and I shouldn’t get discouraged or lazy because I do have hundreds of views per post.

That only motivates me to work even harder so that one day I CAN get hundreds of views per post effortlessly. But for now, I write because it is something I love to do.

I want to give everyone who reads this a little bit of an exercise to do:

I want you to write down all of the activities you do that you are passionate about or a goal you are working towards. Then I want you to write about a time you felt discouraged and wanted to quit that activity or goal because it wasn’t immediately gratifying. Lastly, I want you to write why you continued. And bonus, if you are writing and come across an activity or goal that you let slip to the wayside, make a commitment to yourself to reevaluate that goal or activity and try to re-devote yourself to whatever it is you’ve given up on due to your lack of patience.

Just remember, like the tortoise and the hare, slow and steady wins the race~

Jess~