Is there something you’ve been waiting for for a long time? If so, you’re not alone.
Waiting can be hard.
That’s why Jean Jaques Rousseau declared, “Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.”
When we are babies, we cry and we get what we want. Whether food, care, or comfort, things usually come quickly.
As we age, it’s imperative we grow in patience and self-control. We must learn to wait well. Good things don’t usually happen instantaneously – they take time.
Undoubtedly, you’ve heard the saying, “The best things come to those who wait.” The original phrase was thought to come from Lady Mary Montgomerie Currie, “All things come to those who wait.”
Like most things that produce good fruit, they take time.
Tolstoy accurately discerned, “Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow – that is patience. The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”
The Art of Waiting
All you really have control over is what you decide to do or not do right now. You can do little things that make a big difference. You can plant the seeds today that will become an oak tree tomorrow, but you can’t make the oak tree grow.
To wait well is to plant the seeds you can plant today knowing they will yield a harvest tomorrow.
In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear refers to what is called “the aggregation of marginal gains” – a phrase coined by British cyclist Dave Brailsford. It states that if you “break everything down and improve it by 1 percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.” Imagine if you can get 1% better each year for a period of 10, 20, or 30 years? That’s a significant increase over time.
When we wait that way, there is momentum and negentropy.
Negentropy is what is defined as the opposite of entropy. If entropy is when there is disorder, chaos, and randomness, negentropy is when things become more orderly. It’s the opposite of randomness and chaos.
Waiting well creates order and diminishes chaos.
And the fruit of patience is peace and contentment.
Today Is What Matters
Doing the little things you can do today is not lazy or passive it’s proactive. Then, when the time is right, you will be ready to rise to the challenge.
When individual players were unhappy because they wanted more playing time, legendary coach John Wooden would tell them, “The time to prepare isn’t after you have been given the opportunity. It’s long before that opportunity arises. When the opportunity arrives, it’s too late to prepare.”
Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today. Your future is determined (in part) by the seeds you plant today.
Or as Mother Teresa once said, “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We only have today. Let us begin.”
What things are you waiting for? What small steps you can take right now? What can you make 1% better?
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*Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash
