Patience; A Fundamental Tool To Achieving Success
From the little knowledge of farming that I have, I understand that there is no way to plant a seed and harvest from it in just a day. For the harvest to come, the farmer has to wait for a period of time after planting. This is patience. One of the major undoings of many people in this era is that they want everything quick-quick and this has resulted in many of them going through shortcuts which will ultimately have negative impact. The truth is that when it comes to "lasting success," there are no shortcuts - you either follow the procedure or you forget about the result. One of the procedures is patience.
When you start up a business for example; there will be the setup phase, the investment phase and many other intermediate phases before arriving at the profits. If you try to jump from the first stage to the final stage, it may become problematic. This is where a lot of people have fallen victims of. Some shady business proposals will spring out and they will promise them quick money and a lot of people will fall for it. I mean, which kind of business will you invest and get more than double of your investment in days? Those that do not want to go through the process of waiting will, most times, fall into disadvantageous situations.
When a woman is pregnant for example; there is usually a stipulated duration that the pregnancy has to stay before delivery - this is called the "gestation period." It is expected that the woman will have patience and hope for the expected delivery date. If she grows impatient and decides to induce delivery before the due date, it may lead to premature baby with its attendant risks. In everything that concerns success and achievements, you cannot overrule patience.
Even in academics for example; you may have a vision of what you want to achieve, but it will definitely require you to go through the processes involved: like attending lectures, taking quizzes, writing exams, etc. All these are part of what will ultimately make you to achieve your academic aim. In the same way in life, for everything that you want to achieve there is always a rule to follow patiently, and contravening the rule may defeat the purpose.
A friend of mine who is a pilot once revealed to me that no matter how much experience you have acquired in aviation, you will still need to take direct instructions from the control tower so as to make for a smooth flight. At this point, I realized that experience is not a substitute to taking instructions and to do so patiently. As a matter of fact, the more experience you have in life, the more you understand the need for patience. There are things that you are hoping to get and even working yourself up to get it that will be simply delivered in the course of time - but only if you will give time a little time.
I remember during the earlier days of the mobile phones in the country, a lot of people did all manner of unthinkable and unwholesome things just to afford a mobile phone. This got heightened when the Blackberry phone made its way into the market - it was seen as a sign of "belonging" and most people struggled to get one. Now take a fast-forward to this era, the same mobile phone is among the easiest things to afford. All these happened in just a matter of time. You do not need to prove anything to anyone, just have patience and follow life "one moment at a time."
If you will be able to imbibe patience into your life, a lot of things that would have bothered you will not. This reminds me of what my friend's father once told us in one of the days when we went to his house to play with the kids, when we were much younger. He said:
why burn your tongue with a hot food when it will later become cold?
Those words did not make much meaning at that point because we were young, but as I grew older, I realized the meaning of the words. His statement was about patience. There are some troubles that you would easily avoid if you have patience. You should also know that having patience does not mean wasting or whiling away your time. It means following the due process of waiting for your success to mature.
Thanks for reading
