Learn to be patient.

Learn to be patient in everything that you do. Learn to be patient when life is looking up, and learn to be patient when everything is going south. Learn to be patient because nothing you do will ever be easy and patience is the only skill that is guaranteed to pull you out of the muck.


Just A Pinch

Web developers, entrepreneurs, freelancers remember why you signed up for your jobs. If you wanted your life to be a walk in the park you would have been a gardener. When you decided to build a business from scratch and cast your lot against statistics you signed up for trouble. Never forget. Feel free to complain, but be sure you’re doing it with a smile on your face.

If you’re looking for a certain path to failure, ignore the value of patience. The examples are everywhere — entrepreneurs who want to grow their businesses so quickly that they lose sight of the fact that they are bleeding money and equity faster than they can bandage it, writers who send in manuscript after manuscript of half-completed drafts because they do not have the patience to craft that one perfect document, professionals who spend 30 years knee deep in the grind because they “don’t have the time” to grow their skills.

Take today to cultivate your patience.

You’d be stunned at how many problems can be solved by trying . . . and trying and if that doesn’t work, changing your approach and trying again. The biggest challenge is never the task itself but choosing not to give it up no matter how bleak the outlook. Like your gym teacher always told you, the benefit of a hard exercise program is locked in the last few moments of exertion, when you tear down old muscles in preparation for them to be rebuilt into stronger ones, the same goes for your goals — your measure can be found in the last seconds of work, those endless seconds when it would have been just as easy to quit — all the rest is a warm-up.

Also recognize that your life is not a sitcom and Bob Saget will not solve your problems in 23 minutes or less. Everything takes time and you need to have the patience and the resolution to see that. It’s easy to huff and puff about not getting everything you want exactly when you want it, unfortunately, you gain nothing in the bargain and it’s a monumental waste of breath.

Do what you can, when you can as soon as you can but have the wisdom to see when you simply cannot. Sometimes the only solution to a problem is letting time do its part in resolving it, and the more you push against it the more likely it is to topple over onto you.

One final shot before I go — with all this talk of patience you can’t forget that you need to give yourself the chance to be patient. Save money, time and favors, prepare yourself for the long haul — build the sort of life that can weather the occasional storm. That way, you might not be able to surmount every problem you come across but you can outlast them all.

So next time you find yourself with your back against the wall, faced with late proposals, annoying clients or missed deadlines, take a breath and smile. You can handle it, as long as you have the presence of mind and the patience to see it through.

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