When it comes to being a harsh critic of me, I’ve got everybody beat. Can you relate? I’ve worked on a lot of aspects of my personality over the years. My stubbornness, my negativity, my ‘only child syndrome’ that compels me to want to do everything myself because it’s all I’ve ever known. And all of those have improved immensely both because of consciously working on them as well as simple maturity. In time, we become more comfortable with change and the unexpected, so it can lead us to look at things from multiple perspectives as we interact with a variety of people through work and downtime.
But then there’s patience. I don’t know if that can truly be mastered if the tools simply aren’t in the toolbox to begin with. I’ve been an impatient person for my whole life. And in this new era of “Just Google It!” and quick turnaround of information, I’m as impatient as ever. And that doesn’t mean only with my fellow men and women out there. Nope, it means with me, too.
I’m going to be chatting shortly with a very important friend of mine who has helped guide me through a lot of professional and personal challenges and goals along the way. She may not realize it but she has helped me temper those impatience flare-ups that arise. We haven’t spoken in a long time not for any one particular reason other than busy lives and in my case, perhaps a conscious pull away from what my regularly scheduled life looked like a year ago. But I’m looking forward to talking with her again because when I have a lot of things I want to accomplish and feel like I needed to already accomplish them yesterday, I can get lost on the path to get there. And she has been a tremendous friend and colleague to kick my butt back onto the road I need to be traveling.
I don’t have a lot of tolerance for my setbacks that I feel I contributed to in some form or another, be it procrastination, changed minds, being wishy-washy about something I was previously firm in thought. I have far more patience with others than I do with myself. Does that sound familiar to you? It happens all the time. You know the scenario. You make the checklist of everything you want to do that week or that month or maybe even the whole year ahead, and first you feel a wave of excitement about the prospect of achieving them, and then, your not-so-good friend Self-Doubt reminds you of how ambitious your lofty goals are and tries to persuade you that you’ll be lucky to tackle half of them. That’s when I start looking for a sock to stuff in that naysayer’s mouth!
I have a lot I want to get done this year. I’m trying to break it down one step at a time like all the life coaches and motivational authors out there suggest. The impatience chip in me keeps generating a server error.
But I’ll get there. And if this rings true for you, too, then WE’LL get there. Because sometimes just telling others what you plan to do can be a great starting point to making those goals turn into achievements. So…look for a blog on Sunday telling you what I have brewing over here. I look forward to sharing it with you.
And feel free to leave a comment here or on Twitter or Facebook about any tricks you’ve picked up along the way that have helped you deal with your penchant for impatience, especially with yourself. I would appreciate them and so will the rest of my friends.
Make it a beautiful day. ~ ck
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