Can anyone relate, that as kids, you were impatient? You couldn’t quite understand why you had to wait in the grocery line so long, or wait in the car while your parents went into a store, or wait for your sibling to get out of basketball practice, or wait for this, or wait for that.
No need to raise your hands with this question, how many have you have been told to have patience? Or that patience is a virtue? Or to just be patient?
We grew up being told over and over to be patient, to wait, to not rush. I’m actually happy to break the news to you … we were taught wrong. Patience is not a virtue – yes, from time to time we can benefit from it but that is simply because as we are being patient, as we wait, our expectations of the result slowly lower so that by the time what we were being patient about happens, we’re just happy it finally happened!
Let’s start with a story. I recently went on a tour of different public relations industries in Chicago with the Public Relations Student Society of America. We all want to be public relations specialists and journalists. I’ve been in the writing industry for quite some time and have some strong contacts here in Madison. While on the trip I got to talking with a girl who is a senior at UW Madison, getting her degree in Journalism. She wants to work in the magazine industry. We talked a lot about it and I mentioned to her that I knew a couple people in Madison in the magazine industry that I could connect her with. We talked it over and I said if she emailed me some examples of her writing, I would review them and then if they met my standards, I would recommend her to the contacts I know. I figured that weekend she would email me. She didn’t. Being forgiving, I sent her a message reminding her I was willing to help her out any way I could and to send me a piece of content. She never did.
This is how I see it. She had patience. She figured if I was willing to help her then she didn’t need to get me an example of her writing right away. Then, as she put it off fear sank in. That’s what happens when you’re patient: fear sinks in, always.
As she waited, taking her time to respond to me, her mind gave her dozens of reasons why she shouldn’t ship me her writing, her art. She began to doubt me because I’m a student too. Maybe her ego told her she wanted to do this on her own. Regardless, if she had reacted immediately, sent me her writing, she could be making progress. But she didn’t. Inaction always proceeds patience.
One last note on the pitfalls of patience. Many people use patience to think things over, to ask better questions, to contemplate the situation, to work their brain. To that I have one thing to say, doing so sparks more fear than certainty. Instead of being patient and letting that happen, that’s why we have what is called an “experience”, that’s why we have evaluations, that’s why we have feedback. If we always do the checking before finishing, we will never finish, never follow through, and never send that email.
Let’s take a different look at impatience, specifically, the benefits of it. In my writing, I always end with saying a reminder to Stay Positive & something else that relates to what I wrote about. Being impatient is one of the greatest actions you can take to stay positive. When you are impatient, you always expect the positive, the best case scenario. You don’t have time for road bumps, detours, or anything else getting in your way. In other words, when you are impatient, you never focus on what you don’t want. And in the case that something problematic does arise, there is no sulking in it, you fix it fast and move on. Impatience will get you places more often than it will prevent you from reaching them. When you’re focused and positive, those are traits of someone unstoppable.
“We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavoring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic … sometimes you just get in there and just force yourself to work, and maybe something good will come out.” – Russian orchestrator, Peter Tchaikovsky
Stay Positive & Impatience Credits You To Choose Conventionality
Garth E. Beyer
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