The Benefits Of Patience In The Journey To Success
In life, there are timelines to success and there are requirements that need to be observed. For example, when a farmer plants some seeds, there are timelines between when he plants to when it starts to germinate, to when it starts to grow, to when it starts to flower and bring fruits. In all these timelines, the farmer will be patient until the harvest time has come. If he goes to the farm to harvest the plant just after germination, he will have nothing to harvest.
In the example I cited with the farmer, there are things that are required from the farmer to engage in while he exercises patience for the harvest season: he will weed his farm, apply fertiliser, tender it, etc. If he does not go through these farm practices, the harvest that he has been waiting for might not be up to his expectation. In the same way in life, patience does not mean sitting and folding your hands for things to fall into place, rather it means following the due process to achieving something. It is not the act of waiting that justifies your patience but what you do when you are waiting.
The good things of life (like success) are worth waiting for. More often than not, the longer the waiting time required, the bigger the success. Example: It takes a very short time for rat to gestate and bring forth offsprings but the size of the offsprings will be as small as what is expected of a rat. However, it take an elephant a considerable amount of time to gestate and bring forth offsprings, but the the size of the offsprings will be many times bigger than the rat. In a similar manner, you will not expect the big dream that you have to get actualized at the same time as a micro dream.
When a farmer goes to his farm and plants corn and cocoa seeds, in less than 4 months, the corn will be ready to be harvested, but after that, the corn will be gone and has to be replanted again. The cocoa may a few years to grow into a tree and starts producing fruits, but when it starts it will produce annually for a very long time without having to be replanted. In life, each dream has different maturity period, but it takes an extensive amount of maturity to be able to determine effectively the time frame and give it the required patience.
If you want to start a business, it is worthwhile to draw out a business plan and a road-map, which also includes the timelines from the start to the point of drawing profits. Someone that starts a roadside retail shop may begin to make profits from the same day but the profits may just be meagre and can only sustain their daily food. However, for someone that invests into real estate, he may not seen an immediate return but when it starts to come, it will be massive and can last for years. This is why you should not compare your own dream to someone else's own because their own destination might just be a beginning for you and your different dreams have different timelines.
Patience may not be convenient at the moment, but the results are priceless. It is either you pay the price of patience and achieve durable success than to try to go with shortcuts and cut short the success. If you pluck a fruit before it matures, you will not get the enjoyment from consuming the fruit and it may even be unhealthy to be consumed. But when you allow it to full maturity, it becomes good. Similarly, lack of patience can make someone to eat their future in the present and then have nothing left for the future, so beware.
What you do not have today, do not allow yourself to be pressured into going through "do or die" just to have it. You will be surprised how things change with the passage of time. If you take a look at your life now, you will realize that what you have now in abundance were what you wished for. Imagine if you had done unworthy things or have lost patience over them, how will you feel now? I remember a few years back, during the infancy days of mobile phone, many people's desire was to have Blackberry phone. A lot even treaded dangerous paths just to afford Blackberry. Now look at today, Blackberry is not even in vogue and phone is among the easiest things to afford. This reminds me of this popular Nigerian quote:
What is hot will get cold with time; have patience
Thanks for reading
This is a good reminder about patience, thanks @samminator.
Thanks a lot friend