The virtue of patience. Building confidence takes patience – it can sometimes take years. Some people attract confidence naturally. But, unfairly as the world works, not everyone does. If life’s truly got you down, turning it around is one of the bigger projects you’ll ever undergo. And even with a fairly normal life, rising above the average and becoming extraordinarily successful will also take years.
This is one of the major reasons that people get stuck in unsatisfying lives: We often end up settling for certain conditions because we think they’re inevitable. This can be because we’ve endured them for a certain period, and/or because we find ourselves coming back to them. It’s all due to a lack of one little term, which means a world of difference between those who succeed and those who don’t.
Patience
When someone settles for less, there’s necessarily a bi-sensation of giving up. And even though this might feel nice, it only does so because it’s comfortable. And, more often than not, comfort is what keeps us from getting where we want to be. How many times have you planned to get up early only to snooze within the first millisecond of the alarm clock? How many times have you wanted to lose weight only to keep gorging on junk food several times a week?
We settle for things by allowing them to happen. And by not being sufficiently patient we give way for allowing something to happen which we might end up settling for, even though initially we wouldn’t necessarily want to. This is especially true for people of low confidence. When we’re not confident, we think unrealistically less of our abilities, therefore often not putting in the necessary work to succeed in whatever our pursuit, thereby getting used to failing.
And, in turn, we end up thinking of not only ourselves, but of everything we do, as a failure. — Which, in a classic example of downward spiralling, affects our patience negatively. However, if one has enough patience to succeed, guess how that affects our confidence — and our patience? Yes, exactly.
Patience is crucial. Not only to succeed in any endeavours, but to a basic, good life. Think about it: If you want to achieve ANYTHING worthwhile, how are you gonna do it if you deem failure in the midst of the process only because you get impatient?
Action Item
For 24 hours, turn off your phone, don’t go online, and don’t watch any TV or listen to any radio. Why? Because we’ve gotten so used to these everyday distractions that our attention span, and, hence, our patience, suffers drastically. The longer you’re able to abstain from these kinds of instant gratification-kinda stimuli, the better your patience will be.
Author Profile
