We Lack Patience

In a world with everything coming at us so quickly, so immediately, we have started to lack a large amount of patience, and it comes in all forms; line-ups at the grocery store, line-ups in traffic, our journeys in life such as our studies, our weight loss, even how long it takes FedEx to drop off a package. All of this impatient behaviour is basically being accepted in our need it now society.

Patience is a big stressor, and stress is the biggest killer on the planet that no one speaks about. We hear cancer, heart attack, stroke and other diseases but we never hear anyone say stress killed them. We stress ourselves out about everything these days, like literally everything.

Lacking patience does not do one single good thing for us at anytime, wanting everything now isn’t how we should live our lives and it’s taking away from what working for something means, earning something because you put in the time to get it, busting your ass to achieve your goal for more than a day, a week, a semester, everything in life worth having takes time, and we need to learn there is plenty of it.

I literally have never heard anyone say there are just too many hours in a day. Everyone says there are just not enough. Well there is plenty of time in a week, a month, a year, just be patient with what your goals are, put in the work to achieve them, and your time will come.

When that time comes, learn to embrace the time and enjoy those moments that you have so patiently been waiting for. Those times will end up being the most valued times in your life because you worked hard and put in the actual time necessary to be rewarded with something.

It reminds me of when I was a young boy playing hockey, my grandfather made me a deal. It was my second year of Atom hockey (ages 9-10) and well, our prior season we didn’t lose a game, and that year I wanted to do the same. I was our first line center, so he told me he would pay me $1.00 for every goal and $0.50 for each assist. Well that year in 32 games, I had 130 points. After the championship game, I remember him asking me how many points I got, so I told him, and he was in shock and almost didn’t believe me, so I pulled out my note pad and copies of all the game sheets (my father was the team manager) and he went through them all, and it ended up being what I had said. I made $100.00. He smiled and laughed and told me I was going to make him broke if I kept this up.

So it took me 5 months of hockey to make $100.00, and to say I was excited was an understatement, I was 10 years old. Now at 34, if I had to wait that long to make $100.00 I’d be filing for chapter 11 pretty quickly. But I would still be happy for that opportunity at any given time of my life to score goals and get assists for money.

Here is my take home from my 10 year old self, if you truly love what you are doing, the timeframe in which you get paid won’t be the difference in you loving what you do. You just have to have the patience to get there as it might not come tomorrow, or next week, but if you’re willing to be patient, it will come, and it will be worth the wait.