Patience is a Virtue

"Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful" Hebrews 10:23

The one item success coaches do not talk about enough, at least, not enough for my impatient self, in the need for patience. An entire chapter should be given to this subject for it is that critical to success.

If we accept Napoleon Hill's notion of "Whatever a man can conceive and believe, he can achieve." or from Matthew 7:7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” then we except the notion that whatever righteous thing we have fixed out minds on we can achieve.

But even given that, it requires two critical things - persistence and patience. I've spoken about a third; faith, already. It is obvious that if you want a thing, then you must put it into motion, not just once but continuously. This is one area where you have only to look around you to see that the overwhelming majority of people do not put it into practice. That talk a good talk but only timidly actually take rubber to the road and drive down the path to success. First road block they come to usually stumps them as this road has no GPS to tell them in advance what is the proper way to proceed but if they were to just take to the side street they would discover the detour is marked.

"Success it the ability to go from one failure to another without loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill

We must remain persistent with our actions even when the results are not indicative of success.

I have seen it commonly said that Thomas Edison had almost 10,000 failures before he successful invented the electric light bulb. That's not entirely true. The electric light had already been invented in Britain by Swan and Canada by Woodward before Edison even started. Edison bought Woodward's patent and eventually merged with Swan's company to sell electric lights in Europe. The reason Edison is credited is because he is the one that persisted in refining the idea until he had a design that would be practical and affordable to the average consumer.

Did it take 10,000 tries? Perhaps but in the end it was Edison's persistence and vision that enabled him to become rich off of it even though the initial idea and brilliance was from someone else. Edison expected success.

Had Woodward had the faith, persistence and patience to continue trying we might all be calling the electric light bulb a Canadian invention instead.

However the stumbling block for many of us, often myself included, is in the lack of patience. We persistently continue to try, continue to hold the vision - with faith but when we do not see the results we become frustrated. This is why patience is so critically important. We do not know when the breakthrough will come.

In the movie - The Secret - they talk about how the Law of Attraction has a delay factor. We must first create the seed of an idea and then plant that idea into our subconscious minds, from there it will germinate but like any seed growing into a plant or tree the process takes time. Depending on the seed it could be a day before we see a sprout, a week or even years later when certain conditions are met.

A plant seed has an advantage in that it never doubts itself. It doesn't sit on the surface of the ground and worry that it isn't planted under the earth to grow, nor does it fuss that perhaps it's been planted too deeply and won't reach the surface once it starts to grow. It simply waits for the right conditions and then it merely grows be it minutes after it's fallen or three years later. The universe provides the soil, the water, and the light it needs.

In the same way, once we have created an intense desire, we need to be able to live in a state of patient expectation that the desire will manifest itself into reality. Patient being the operative word for anxious or impatient expectations will only draw those things we don't want, those factors that could stunt our growth into our lives since that's what we've begun to focus on.

There will always be road blocks and detours on the way, that's natural, do not let them sway your expectations - remember, "He who promised is faithful". Cultivate a mindful state of relax and joyous expectation. Thank God every day for your success, envision what you will be doing once you have achieved it, mentally see yourself as being that person already. This will seem weird and like you're living a lie at first because your current reality is always a reflection of your past thinking patterns. Do not dwell on the current realities. Acknowledge them and act accordingly but do not dwell on them. Dwell only and always on the future you're in the process of creating.