Just wait. Still wait, don’t become a tree, but wait. Wouldn’t you like to know what this article is about? Well, that’s unfortunate, I guess you’ll just have to be patient until I get to the point.
When seeking out advice on how to live a more successful life, the adage of patience is a virtue is often thrust into focus. At least from the outside, this seems like solid advice. To paraphrase Simon Sinek, all the human aspects of life that make it worthwhile are slow. Relationships are slow, meaningful careers are slow, skill mastery is slow.
It is the duration of effort required to obtain these nearly universally chased things which grant them value; however, because I am so use to instantaneous or near instantaneous gratification, these truths are hard to swallow.
I’m often dissatisfied with myself and my lack of socially accepted success. As an antidote to this, I often spend exorbitant amounts of time looking up ways to improve myself. I’ll discover articles praising the values of patience and mindfulness. I believe these traits are highly linked because being more mindful makes patience easier.
Patience, like many traits, is one that needs to be cultivated and constantly reinforced before it becomes a habit. A cruel irony is that in order to cultivate the ability to wait for a prolonged reward, one must often posses the ability to find joy in the daily grind that leads to the reward.
Thankfully, this is where mindfulness comes to the rescue. The whole point of this philosophy is to live in the moment, with no conception of past or future. It may seem paradoxical that mindfulness is a companion of patience. After all, isn’t the idea of patience to wait for something yet to happen?
Of course silly, but this doesn’t mean that you can’t find happiness in the interim moments. More importantly, it is often this interim happiness that allows us to continue driving forward towards a goal we deem important.
While we acknowledge the important of fostering both of these skills, their development is made more difficult by a culture of instant gratification and 24/7/365 interaction. An important part of both skills is their requirement for space and quiet. The ability to reflect and put in the work is critical for fostering both these skills.
I find it difficult to integrate mindfulness in my life because there are always a million tantalizing distractions just an arm reach away. Then, I find myself less likely to delay these rewards because I’m so distracted thinking about the past or future, that I’d rather take the distraction to ease the cognitive pain.
For example, the entire time I’ve been writing this article (for those keeping score at home, this is draft 3) I’ve wanted to look at my phone, check social media, look at cute photos of kittens, and do anything but the hard, sustained work of producing this likely mediocre article.
By some small miracle, I’ve been able to stay on task, but it has been a constant battle. Unfortunately, if I were to cave to my short-term desires, as opposed to delay the gratification, I’d be sacrificing my longer term goals. This would then further decrease my ability to be present and patient for some long away reward.
While doing things now that I likely won’t see dividends for until much later is painful, I’m slowly making peace with the process of waiting. As I look into the back stories of those I admire, I realize the “overnight success” is anything but.
For me, this makes the process easier because when I start to berate myself for my lack of progress, it helps to remind myself that most of my heroes became so not through freak radiation exposure, but rather the more mundane daily grind of their craft. When this awareness creeps in, it then becomes easier to wait, since I no longer need to deal with the unpleasant emotions.
Another way that I’ve tried to integrate more patience and mindfulness into my life is through my transit. Unless I need to get somewhere fast, when I walk I force myself to wait for the crossing signal instead of darting across the street at the first opportunity. When I’m driving I force myself to go only a little above the speed limit, mostly to keep others happy. Finally, I occasionally elect to take public transit to places I could get to faster by simply driving or walking.
These decisions aren’t easy. I end up fighting my impulses for more and faster at every turn. That’s the point. I hope by welcoming the present moment and deciding to wait in the short-term, some of this skill will transfer to the long term.
Ultimately, patience and I have a strained relationship, but I’m working to mend it. I believe that by repeated choice and welcoming the moment without judgement and without concern for past or future, I can become a better man and make my dreams come true.
Apprentice Adult 