Impatience Is A Superpower (If You Know How To Use It)
Here’s how to use it
I’m not a patient person. Are you?
I know patience is a virtue, and I’m trying to better myself.
Because some things just take time. You can’t hack them. As Warren Buffet says, you can’t have a baby in one month if you impregnate nine women.
So, for years and years, I’ve been patient with my online business and myself. I’ve tried to do what I thought was right, and waited (and waited) to see the results of my hard work.
Only they came infuriatingly slowly.
Still, I managed my anger. Deep breaths. That’s normal. It’ll happen. Just be patient. Keep grinding.
It’s what the big creators say, right? You can read it on X, on Medium, and on LinkedIn. Perseverance pays off.
One of my favorite quotes from “Think and Grow Rich” is this:
“When riches begin to come, they come so quickly, in such great abundance, that one wonders where they have been hiding during all those lean years.” — Napoleon Hill, “Think and Grow Rich”
It fit the story I was telling myself. I was paying my dues. One day, riches will come super fast, and I’ll succeed overnight.
Lately, I’m growing a bit impatient.
Riche-e-e-es? Riches! Where the hell are you?
I’m not as rich as I want to be, but lately, I’m becoming wise. I’m almost 37. It’s about time wisdom starts kicking in.
So I’m learning self-love. Not the social media kind, the real kind. And in the spirit of self-love, I’ve been thinking that I should accept my impatience as is.
I mean, I’ve been an online solopreneur for ten years. I’ve faced burnout, mean comments, idiot clients, and $0 months.
I’ve been a mom for 5 years. Married 9.
If you have to compare how patient I am now compared to when I was 20, I’ve changed massively. Sometimes I can’t even recognize myself. In a good, but also slightly confusing way.
I’m already as patient as I’m ever going to be.
And yet, I’m still incredibly impatient compared to most people.
So what do I do? I turn impatience into a superpower.
I journaled through this the other day, and I asked myself what are the positives of being impatient.
I came up with a bunch of answers.
I try more things because I decide to try them faster. I’ve lived in 3 countries, written 2 novels, and started a coaching/copywriting/blogging business out on a limb. This business now supports our family and gives us plenty of free time for our kids.
I make fast decisions, which has allowed me to take advantage of so many opportunities. We bought the apartment we live in the day we saw it. We paid the earnest money necessary only to be rejected by multiple banks later that week. It was an incredibly difficult deal, but we figured it out. Because I was impatient. Since then, the property doubled in price, not to mention it’s been an amazing home for our family.
But most of all, I always ask myself this question: How can I speed things up?
And I want to take a moment to tell you why this is an awesome question to ask oneself.
How can I speed things up?
It’s confident.
Asking yourself how to speed things up implies that you believe things will happen in the first place. You don’t waste a minute wondering whether it will work. As you shouldn’t.
It’s strategic.
If you think big enough, the desire to speed up success should give you an instant big-picture view and help you create a strategy. What to focus on, how to do it, and who to learn from. All these questions (and their answers) become a part of the plan.
It’s proactive.
When you’re impatient, you don’t just write one article and wait for it to go viral. You don’t complain that your colleague doesn’t do her job. I used to do everyone's job if I had to. Annoying for some of my colleagues, I know, but I worked in a young, fast-growing company and became the fastest-promoted person.
According to Alyse Kalish, a career journalist, “The people who spin their impatience into a positive thing do so by focusing on what they can do rather than what they need from others.”
Impatience can only hurt you if it’s directed towards things outside of your control.
When you expect that you’ll achieve specific results by a specific timeframe, impatience hurts. It can make you anxious and provoke self-doubt.
When you expect a person to react in a certain way (or by a specific time frame), it annoys you when they don’t.
For impatience to be a superpower, you should only funnel it toward what you can (realistically) do and control. Instead of setting results-focused goals (i.e., I’ll lose 10 pounds this month), set action-focused goals (i.e., I’ll workout 3 times a week this month).
One of my goals right now is “Write four articles per week.” Sometimes I grow impatient, and I write six. How is that bad?
But! For everything you can’t control, turn on patience mode.
Final Words.
Don’t fight it. Use it.
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