January 23, 2014
Alexia Isaak
Me? Not much. Patience has been my number one struggle in life. I want what I want, and I want it now. That's how I used to think, anyway. Patience is still a struggle, but now I am learning. The good news is that patience can be learned. It's a practice makes perfect kind of thing.
A long time ago I wrote about the difference between patience and tolerance. My mentor, Rhonda Shasteen, helped me understand that patience is more about waiting and tolerance is about putting up with something. Okay, so now that I'm waiting, I want to see integral steps of my progress so I can feel the goal or end result coming my way. It's like seeing a pound or two come off the scale on the way to your goal. Those tiny increments encourage you to fight the good fight and carry one.
Then, there are other times when those tiny steps toward the goal aren't quite so obvious. For example, I'm an avid yoga practitioner, and I have a natural ability to do backbends. I'll thank my mom for putting me into gymnastics when I was a child for that. In yoga, it's a nice step to be able to pop up from a backbend to standing. For many years, I was assisted in this step. I never saw any other progress when one day I popped up all by myself. It surprised my so much, I blurted out in the class, "Oh my! That's the first time I've ever done that by myself."
What I took away from that and the progress I've made in many other postures is that although I can't see the progress happening because it is so slow you don't notice, it doesn't mean that progress isn't happening. In other words, just because you don't see things moving along, doesn't mean things aren't percolating beneath the surface ready to erupt into success like Old Faithful.
Patience does have to do with waiting, I just hope this post will help you make more sense out of the waiting you're doing. Use your time to better yourself, focus on positive things, and choose to be happy rather than focusing on what you don't have right now. I hope you will learn to be patient with me, too, because you can!