Achieving Your Goals - The Power of Patience

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“Learn the art of patience. Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal. Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success.” ~ Brian Adams.

A lack of patience is probably the single most important reason that people give up on achieving their goals. Most long-range goals (by definition ) take time to achieve.

Achieving your Goals takes time and Patience

If you want to lose 20 pounds it is not going to happen in a week or a month or even two. If you want to run in a marathon, it takes months of training to prepare for it. If you want to become president of your company but currently are a junior clerk, it will likely take some years. If you want to become a university graduate that takes at least 3 years. If you want to change your life in any major way, it takes time. Time is the critical element of success.

The Instant World we live in breeds Impatience

At some point everyone feels frustrated by the rate at which progress is being made. Particularly in today’s “instant” world, where gratification is immediate – instant coffee, instant photos, instant access when we click. We want everything as fast as we can possibly have it.

Can you remember the days of having to use snail mail? Posting a letter to a pen pal, waiting days or weeks for it to be delivered? Waiting for the pen pal to write back, then waiting for that letter to be delivered? Few of us can remember the days before telephone when snail mail was the only way to communicate with folks who were not geographically close by - the days when achieving even simple goals took time and required patience.

Most of are accustomed to writing up an email and in a few clicks the message is sent, delivered, received and a response forthcoming. Or even more instant - ‘chatting’ live online in a chat room or through an instant chat program like Messenger or ICQ. We complain because the response takes more than 5 seconds to come up. Literally “5 seconds”. Think about that for a moment.

Recognising Impatience

Against this backdrop it is no wonder that we are impatient with our goals. If something as insignificant as an online chat frustrates us when we have to wait 5 seconds, how much more frustrating is it when we have to wait weeks or months or even years before we can realize goals that are so important to us? For this reason it is important to recognize our impatience and practice being patient.

How to be Patient

Remind yourself that the process will take time. Remind yourself of all the steps you have achieved so far. Dwell on your success to date in the achievement of this goal. If you have lost 5 lbs in the last 2 weeks, focus on that rather than the 15 lbs you still want to lose. If you have successfully completed 1 year of college, meditate on your achievement of having completed that year rather than the 3 years to go. Focus on all the mini-goals you have achieved towards the final achievment of this goal.

Appreciate the Goal Achievement process

Also remind yourself that while you have an end-goal, you are also learning some valuable lessons in this process. You are learning to be patient. You are learning to be persistent. You are learning to be consistent. You are learning to successfully handle obstacles and frustrations. And these skills will serve in achieving your other goals more easily and more consistently. The fact that things take time is not necessarily a negative thing – time serves a useful purpose – it gives you experience and improves your skills. This can only be achieved with time.

Be Patient with yourself

You must also be patient not just with the process, but with yourself. No pathway to a destination is smooth. You will falter at some point. You will feel discouraged and disheartened and want to give up. Recognise that this is normal and is not an actual reason to become upset with yourself or to give up.

Every single person who has ever achieved a goal has lost hope at some point in their journey. Every one has felt doubt and wondered, even briefly, if they could ever achieve what they set their mind to. This is normal and natural. So be patient with yourself.

Combat Impatience by renewing your resolve to succeed

The frustration and doubt is actually part of the process of success. At this point, you must remind yourself of why you want to achieve this goal – you renew your resolution. You reinforce your determination to succeed. You make the choice all over again to achieve this goal. This is a useful step on the way to success. Be patient with your doubts.

Be patient with your mistakes

You must also be patient with your slipups. How many of us have set a goal and never along the way did something that was counter to achieving it. Everyone on a diet has slipped a piece of cake or candy. Everyone has blown of at least one study session. Everyone one has skipped at least one training session. Well, everyone I know ).

The key to succeeding in spite of the occasional poor decision is to get back into your plan immediately. Go back to doing what you need to do today to achieve your goal. You messed up – forgive yourself and keep moving forward. Be patient with your slip-ups. Achieving Your Goals Part VI - Change Your Thinking discusses in detail how to ensure that you don’t make the same slip up twice.

Remember two steps forward and one step backward in still positive forward motion in the right direction.

The keep to maintaining your resolutions and achieving your goals is to keep the big picture of your eventual success always in mind, keep moving always in a forward direction and remember that success is inevitable once you keep trying and never give up. Be patient.

“If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.”

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Posted in A New Start, Choices, Goals, Self Discipline |

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 5th, 2007 at 7:01 am and is filed under A New Start, Choices, Goals, Self Discipline . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.