Dont Wait! Cultivate Patience

I don’t consider myself the most patient person. I’m thinking it must be a quality that’s really calling to be developed in me because the Universe gives me more than ample opportunities to practice it. I have always thought of patience as the ability to wait. I’m beginning to understand it very differently now, because if patience is the ability to wait, then I’ll always be in a state of waiting. I don’t want to perpetually be in a state of waiting for what I want or desire because then I’m sure to never see it manifest. My mind is too busy waiting and putting forth the energy of waiting that it’s surely to keep all I desire just out of my reach. What has started to make itself more clear to me is that patience is not actually the ability to wait but the ability to know with confidence that what I desire is in the works for me.

If I fail to cultivate the art of patience then I am displaying a distrust of the Universe and its ability to work on my behalf. So patience is really confidence (faith) and trust, and when you feel confident and you trust that it’s all being worked out for you, then you can settle into a state of peace which looks very much like patience. There’s nothing to fret over or be anxious about because you know it is happening perfectly for you.

I say this all as someone really struggling with this concept. I understand so very well on an intellectual level but practicing it is another thing altogether. First of all, it’s the idea of me giving up control and me not trying to make something happen.  Second of all, trust and I have had some issues over the years to say the least. I struggle with it because there is a lot of fear that it arouses in me. I admit I want to control and manipulate things into being how I want them and when I want them because I am afraid it won’t happen otherwise. This is akin to shooting myself in the foot, and quite frankly ends up with me settling for something less than spectacular.

I might get something closely resembling what I want but I won’t get the full out, amazing version I’ve got going on in my inner vision. Why? Because I’m mistakenly thinking that I can do better than the Creator of everything and that I can see the much bigger picture that is really not in my view. I start messing with the greater plan for how things will be done for me and I’m more than likely going to end up disappointed or with a far more mediocre version of my dream. Not being anchored in confidence and trust will have me thinking that I need to jump in and make things happen faster because I’m tired of waiting.

I’m a baker so I’ll liken it to baking a cake. If I put the cake in the oven and start manipulating the temperature to make the cake cook faster, what I’m likely to get is a cake which is overdone on top and underdone inside. Then I’ll have to start doing more manipulation to get the middle cooked without burning the top. Then when it’s finally done, it might be palatable but it won’t be nearly as delicious as it could have been if I had just exercised patience with it and trusted that it is supposed to be baked at the time and temperature given for a reason.  Oh, and I’ll probably have ended up spending more time on it, thus defeating my original intent to have it faster. Not exactly working out as I had planned, right?

So, what I’m learning is to give up planning and manipulating things in my life in order to try to get what I want. I think I can’t wait for what I want, and truthfully I can’t because if it equates to waiting in my mind it will always be reflected back to me as waiting. I can reframe it as the ability to trust and have faith and confidence in the larger force that is always on my side and wants me to experience an even greater version of my desires than I can envision. Then it doesn’t feel like waiting anymore and the frustration dissolves, leaving a quiet assurance. I can get on with the business of living knowing that everything shows up and happens at exactly the right time. Haven’t you had those moments when things seemed to take forever to happen in your life and when it finally comes to fruition, you look back and realize it couldn’t have happened a moment earlier because you weren’t ready for it until exactly the moment it happened. You see the perfection of all that had to happen to get you to that place at that particular time.

From that moment of hindsight clarity, I offer you this: give up your need to be the one in control of how your dreams come true. Be clear about what your dreams are and why you want to live them but leave the how to something greater than yourself that will always work it out with perfect timing. Go on, do it. What are you waiting for? 😉