A Lesson In Patience

Tick tock goes the clock.

Staring at the clock on the wall does NOTHING to speed up time, but only makes it slow to a crawl.

All of us at some point in our life become impatient.

We could be waiting on a job offer, a girl to text us back, or anything, but how does one deal with that slow-as-fuck in between time?

I personally, have struggled with being impatient for my whole ENTIRE life.

I have a Type A personality and like for shit to get done fast.

If someone drags their feet, then I get instantly annoyed.

If people don’t respond when I want them to, then irritation sets in like a disease.

I utilize the speed of implementation often with projects and it has worked very well for me.

The problem is, I don’t control the world, nor everyone in it, so learning to develop patience has been one of the hardest struggles of my life.

While I haven’t fully conquered this nagging burden in my life, I have found a few methods for dealing with the ‘downtime’ of waiting on others and I’ll share them now.

#3. Distract Yourself

One of the best methods has been to distract myself from what I’m impatient about with SOMETHING else that is productive.

I’m NOT talking about wasting time, or fucking around in your downtime, but actually focusing all of your efforts on something else that you CAN control.

The feeling of impatience stems largely from feeling a lack of control regarding the situation.

While I’m NOT a control freak, I do tend to run my life with a certain amount of control on all aspects of it.

Distracting myself with another project, or helping someone else while I’m waiting on others, can lessen the nagging annoyance of waiting on others while helping me NOT waste time.

Figure out what you can distract yourself with in a productive manner.

You won’t be wasting time and you’ll get that sense of control back in your life which will help alleviate stress.

#2. The World Doesn’t Revolve Around You

The feeling of entitlement grows stronger with each passing generation, but understanding that the world doesn’t revolve around us will help you be less impatient.

I tend to operate from a standpoint that shit should happen when I want it to, but ah how life will laugh in our face and then kick us to the ground when our egos get in the way.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately ha, the world doesn’t revolve around me, so when I learned to let that go and understand that other people are busy with their respective lives and all of the chaos that comes with that, then I can take a deep breath and chill out.

I will say regarding this though, the easiest way to get people to say “How high?” when you say “Jump!”, is to have leverage over them.

The more they have to LOSE and the more of their life that YOU control, the easier it is to get them to do what YOU want.

It’s no different then being someone’s boss.

The more power you attain and the more you have to offer people the more they will seek to please you.

This is NOT a bad thing, it’s just how the world works.

Powerful people get shit done because they have the leverage to get people to do what they want, when they want it.

Become more powerful and you’ll see how this works first-hand.

#1. Timing Is Everything

Sometimes it’s easy to think that we know it all, but this is rarely true.

Timing REALLY is EVERYTHING and sometimes delays are actually the universe’s way of having our back.

I remember a specific situation in my life where I was hired to do consulting on a soon to be built nightclub in Shinjuku (an area of Tokyo, Japan).

This was going to be a multi-million dollar project and I was in charge of designing the actual layout and design of the club.

Many hours were put into the project.

Thousands were spent on architects and others helping me on the project.

The property was already bought and it was a matter of actually breaking ground.

I became impatient chomping at the bit for us to take this from concept to reality.

Plans were made for me to fly to Japan for meetings.

At the last minute, the main investor started to get cold feet about the entire project and the meetings were canceled.

Needless to say, I was totally pissed.

Then a tragedy occurred with the tsunami earthquake of 2011 in Japan.

I was scheduled to have been there during that exact time.

Would I have died?

Who knows, but the point is that while I saw it as a bad thing when the main investor started to pull out, it was actually a good thing.

Timing is everything. 

Everything. 

Sometimes there is something larger at work and what you think is a setback, is actually NOT.

My impatience might have cost me my life, but thankfully it didn’t.

The project was canceled and thousands of dollars were lost.

The cost of business can sometimes be high, but you CANNOT put a price on your life.

Learn to wait patiently.

Learn to let go of what you CANNOT control and focus on that which you can actually control.

Your stress will drop, your productivity will increase and you might just find you’re a little more happy.

Until next time.

Your man,

-Elijah “The Realist”

P.S Elevate your skills with women here.