How to have resilience and practice the art of intelligent waiting.
The movie Karate Kid comes to my mind. The young man is impatient and wants to learn martial arts quickly, the teacher is patient. The conclusion – a reward comes to those who are patient.
Patience is the practice of maintaining a state of calm and resilience when you are tempted to be impatient, especially when the mind wants to force results, rather than remain in flow.
Patience and Career Progression
We all feel stuck sometimes and we should look for small signs of progression to move on and see the bigger picture. This article from Harvard Business Review argues that when people feel that their career progress is frustratingly slow, they can become dangerously demoralized. But often these people are simply not giving themselves enough time to succeed. They need to cultivate “strategic patience.”
Professor Dorie Clark, the author of The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World argues that just as CEOs who optimize for quarterly profits often fail to make the strategic investments necessary for long-term growth, the same is true in our own personal and professional lives. We need to reorient ourselves to see the big picture.
In Jeff Bezos, 2018 letter to Amazon shareholders he makes a anecdote about a friend who visited a handstand coach in a yoga class.
A close friend recently decided to learn to do a perfect free-standing handstand. No leaning against a wall. Not for just a few seconds. Instagram good. She decided to start her journey by taking a handstand workshop at her yoga studio. She then practiced for a while but wasn’t getting the results she wanted. So, she hired a handstand coach. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, but evidently this is an actual thing that exists. In the very first lesson, the coach gave her some wonderful advice. “Most people,” he said, “think that if they work hard, they should be able to master a handstand in about two weeks. The reality is that it takes about six months of daily practice. If you think you should be able to do it in two weeks, you’re just going to end up quitting.” Unrealistic beliefs on scope – often hidden and undiscussed – kill high standards. To achieve high standards yourself or as part of a team, you need to form and proactively communicate realistic beliefs about how hard something is going to be – something this coach understood well.
Jeff Bezos
We all need long term strategy.