Recently my husband and I had a long conversation. The topic? The need for patience.
Patience has never come easily to me, ever since I was little. I could never sit still, I have always been super productive, and super active. I was and am a big dreamer with bigger goals. Most importantly, I didn’t have the patience to let things happen.
On this particular day, the topic of patience came up because of some reality checks I needed as I work to grow my business. I’ve never been afraid of working hard. In fact, I probably shouldn’t admit that over the years I’ve been guilty of burning the candle at both ends. All in the name of building my dreams. It takes hard work to get your business off the ground; but, it also takes patience and that’s something that I was missing.
Even though I was focusing my energy and working on my dreams;
I felt like things weren’t happening “fast enough”.
I looked around and saw “everyone else” achieving massive results and doing all the “cool” things. When I looked at my own results I felt small. What I didn’t realize is all of the years of hard work and perseverance was building something meaningful.
I’m not ashamed to admit what it’s taken to grow my business:
• I work on Saturdays
• I respond to emails and comments while my husband is driving
• My phone is loaded with voice memos of ideas I have while shopping, walking or eating
• My office is covered with large pieces of paper of brainstorms for new ideas
• I take business calls while I’m walking and even running
I won’t sugarcoat it for you, building a business takes work, determination, and grit.
But with all of this, the thing that you need most is patience…or as I like to refer to it, “a quiet confidence”. Our world is filled with doing things faster, better, and stronger. When we compare ourselves to what we see on social media, we get caught up in the need for instant gratification. We look at the vanity results instead of looking at the deeper meaning and building a deeper connection.
We need time to learn the lessons we need to learn;
so we can get the results we want to get.
As my husband reminded me things need time to grow. Patience doesn’t mean that we sit back and quietly wait. It means we focus on what’s important and we never give up. It means we work on building a real connection with our customers and clients. And it means we continue to show up every day and focus on the things that matter.
Patience is what we develop as we plant our seeds. When continue to do the work we need to do to for our business to bloom.
On mornings when your third cup of coffee just isn’t working…
On days when you feel like you can’t get it all done…
On nights when you sneak in a little extra work because you feel like things aren’t growing...
I feel you.
You’re not alone.
Have patience because you’re getting ready to bloom.
This weeks podcast episode, Episode 7, is all about giving things time to grow.
When we’re working on building something meaningful, something iconic, and that will create a legacy; it rarely happens fast.
But, given time to grow something amazing will happen.
Here’s to having patience ((especially when it is hard to do)) and giving our dreams time to grow!
