In one way or another, we've all witnessed the speed of time change right before our eyes. The clock slows down when we stare at it, almost as if the second-hand knows it's being watched. It taunts us. When we're doing 1-minute planks or when we're waiting for the weekend to come, time seems to be taking its time. And the opposite happens when we desperately hope for time to stop. For some reason, time simply refuses to cooperate.
I've been thinking about this lately because of a recent build-up of anxiety. And in hindsight, most, if not all, of my anxiety stems directly from impatience. I feel that my struggle with the speed at which time travels has reached the point of no control; it's only when I'm asked my age when I'm brought back down to reality. But still, most times, when I'm less mindful of the shortness of my stay on this planet, the heart races when productivity is low and the mind rushes when things aren't happening soon enough.
The more I thought about this, the clearer it became to me. Time is uncertain, dark, and unstable when looking forward, but when we review the past, time is sure, clear (most of the time, at least), and fixed. When focused on the past, time has already gone and now we're here. This means, today is the day we had anticipated a few months ago. Now is the moment we were once impatient about, the moment we've been waiting for.
So I've begun looking back, at the things I used to hope for, to get up everyday knowing full well why I woke up that day, to be excited for Mondays, and to have great, deep relationships among many others, and it's helped place me in the present moment. We're not there yet, far from it, but we're somewhere along the way.
Impatience is the agitation of looking ahead, while patience is the calm of measuring the trail blazed from the day we set our goals to the present moment, goals unrealized and all. But from that point to now, certain events and experiences must have occurred to get us here, no matter how far or near that distance may be. If we're always on the edge about things yet to come, we miss out on the things the things that already have. In some sense, it's a matter of looking at the right direction, at the right moment, something I'm still struggling to learn and embrace.
This is a Handful on patience and impatience
1. Are you human?, a TED Talk by Ze Frank
First things first, it helps to be reminded of our humanity. It's something we too often forget. We're too hard on ourselves and our expectations our through the roof. To make matters worse, our phones have made everything within our reach. We're so used to instant gratification that five seconds on a loading screen is five seconds too long. I think the first step is accepting all this. We're human and we're impatient.
Here's a great reminder by Ze Frank, a creator of online spaces and a humorist, currently Chief of R&D of Buzzfeed. This is him on the TED stage.
2. Rule 4 of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan Peterson
RULE 4:
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
Impatience also stems from comparison, in which case this rule is greatly insightful.
The controversial Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. What amazes me about his works are his references to a wide variety of diverse sources, such as biology, literature, scripture, personal experiences.
His latest book was inspired by an answer he posted in Quora to the question of "What are the most valuable things everyone should know?" His answer can be found here. This is an excerpt from a chapter of his book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos:
We are always and simultaneously at point “a” (which is less desirable than it could be), moving towards point “b” (which we deem better, in accordance with our explicit and implicit values). We always encounter the world in a state of insufficiency and seek its correction. We can imagine new ways that things could be set right, and improved, even if we have everything we thought we needed. Even when satisfied, temporarily, we remain curious. We live within a framework that defines the present as eternally lacking and the future as eternally better. If we did not see things this way, we would not act at all. We wouldn’t even be able to see, because to see we must focus, and to focus we must pick one thing above all else on which to focus.
But we can see. We can even see things that aren’t there. We can envision new ways that things could be better. We can construct new, hypothetical worlds, where problems we weren’t even aware of can now show themselves and be addressed. The advantages of this are obvious: we can change the world so that the intolerable state of the present can be rectified in the future.
The disadvantage to all this foresight and creativity is chronic unease and discomfort. Because we always contrast what is with what could be, we have to aim at what could be. But we can aim too high. Or too low. Or too chaotically. So we fail and live in disappointment, even when we appear to others to be living well. How can we benefit from our imaginativeness, our ability to improve the future, without continually denigrating our current, insufficiently successful and worthless lives? The first step, perhaps, is to take stock. Who are you? When you buy a house and prepare to live in it, you hire an inspector to list all its faults—as it is, in reality, now, not as you wish it could be. You’ll even pay him for the bad news. You need to know. You need to discover the home’s hidden flaws. You need to know whether they are cosmetic imperfections or structural inadequacies. You need to know because you can’t fix something if you don’t know it’s broken—and you’re broken.
How can you start your renovations without being demoralized, even crushed, by your internal critic’s lengthy and painful report of your inadequacies?
Here’s a hint. The future is like the past. But there’s a crucial difference. The past is fixed, but the future —it could be better. It could be better, some precise amount—the amount that can be achieved, perhaps, in a day, with some minimal engagement. The present is eternally flawed. But where you start might not be as important as the direction you are heading. Perhaps happiness is always to be found in the journey uphill, and not in the fleeting sense of satisfaction awaiting at the next peak. Much of happiness is hope, no matter how deep the underworld in which that hope was conceived.
3. Hard Work & Patience by Gary Vaynerchuk
I've referenced to GaryVee plenty of times in the past and this might not be the last time. Hustle everyday, but be patient with the results. For Gary, it's about playing the long game.
Macro patience, micro speed
4. Follow The Process, a chapter from The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
Much of patience involves pacing oneself through the drudgery of everyday. It's so tempting to look towards the end goal every chance we get. I think this is important, but too much of it and we're only slowing ourselves down.
Ryan Holiday is an author and marketer, whose books have popularized the two thousand year-old philosophy of stoicism, and his book The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph is a perfect example. The chapter entitled Follow The Process begins,
Coach Nick Saban doesn’t actually refer to it very often, but every one of his assistants and players lives by it. They say it for him, tattooing it at the front of their minds and on every action they take, because just two words are responsible for their unprecedented success: The Process.
Saban, the head coach of the University of Alabama football team—perhaps the most dominant dynasty in the history of college football—doesn’t focus on what every other coach focuses on, or at least not the way they do. He teaches The Process.
“Don’t think about winning the SEC Championship. Don’t think about the national championship. Think about what you needed to do in this drill, on this play, in this moment. That’s the process: Let’s think about what we can do today, the task at hand.”
In the chaos of sport, as in life, process provides us a way.
If you'd rather listen to your books, here's Holiday reading some chapters on Tim Ferriss' podcast. This particular chapter starts at the 23:36 mark. It's the perfect podcast episode for before and after long stressful days.
5. Simon Sinek on Patience at CreativeMornings San Diego
In this video, Simon Sinek teaches us that finding what we love, whether it's a person or a vocation, is not a discovery. It takes work and time to get there.
If you haven't seen Sinek's talk on the golden circle on TED yet, then you should go see that here. But this video below is an important message, especially for anyone who's only still starting out.
It's as if the entire generation is standing at the foot of the mountain. They know exactly what they want. They can see the summit, but what they can't see is the mountain.