Ah yes, patience. The lacking characteristic of our modern lives and indeed, of most people. I'm constantly working on my level of patience, since it's honestly not something that naturally comes to me. Even so, I recognize the tremendous importance of proper patience in the life of a potentially wealthy individual as he takes on his wealth journey and even after the fact.
I've never known a more well-defined double-edge sword in my life than patience. What do I mean? Simple, patience will benefit the rich and hurt the poor. The only caveat here being a positive one: if you are currently not financially independent but still have the mindset of a wealthy individual, patience will be your friend as well. In its simplest definition, patience is nothing more than the passage of time with no involvement by you.
My theory is that patience benefits the wealthy (even of mindset) for a few simple reasons. First of all, the wealthy are constantly planning, acting upon and realizing what they have in mind. This means that the passage of time translates into progress and progress into results.
Even when it comes to making purchases, the wealthy gain from patience. Wealthy people realize that a lot of the gizmos we've been sold as necessities today will be worth a mere few dollars a couple of years from now, so they wait to satiate their consumer thirst. Naturally, the byproduct of this being more conscious spending, more money in their pockets and increase enjoyment of their purchases.
Same principle applies to people with a poor mindset. Look, I'm not going to whine about how much money people waste on things they really don't need. I will, however, point out the mechanics of how the average consumer thinks and acts. Here's a typical scenario from discovery to purchase for your typical person:
Repeat ad nauseum and ad infinitum. Behind the scenes of this typical scene, though, lies a tremendous amount of copious debt, clutter, excess, uselessness and sometimes even poor self-esteem. All symptoms of a poor (see the pattern) understanding of how wealth is built and maintained. But more than anything else, it demonstrates a lack of patience in order to see if the item in question will even add value to your life and when time does pass (and it will,) you will be left with more debt, more financial pressure and less disposable income.
The so-called great recession has come and gone and with it, a lot of the spending habits of the average person. Some, however, came out of this time living with financial constrains a better and more intelligent consumer. The ever-decreasing attention spans that can be found nowadays are a consequence of the increased immediacy of the average reward. People want everything right now.
But I will contend that average is not who you want to be. And so, opting out of behaving in an impatient way should be at the top of your to-do list. Since patience is nothing more than time going by, normally without your intervention, we have to create estimates of when the situation will occur, put it on our calendars, act upon them and go on with our lives.
What I just said is hard to do, I'm aware of that. You would probably think that letting time go by is the easiest thing in the world to do, but when you try to actually do it, difficulties will show themselves up. It's normal to struggle with anxiety, anticipation and worry when it comes to being patient.
The easiest way that I've found to fight all of the aforementioned symptoms is to be constantly busy. If you can't make the deadline shorter through sheer force of will, keeping it out of your mind through other occupations will be the safest bet you'll have.
Also, you will be required to accustom your mind to sacrifice the short-term for the long-term. You've probably heard about the famous "marshmallow test." If you haven't, consider yourself lucky as it is a darling for anecdotal filling in modern books. All that you need to know is that it's been scientifically proven that people who sacrifice short-term gain for long-term reward have a greater edge as far as success, happiness and health goes.
The kind of shift in mindset that I'm talking about will prove difficult, even impossible for some people to adapt to in their lives. But of course, the answer is surprisingly simple: little by little. I will not ask you (because it wouldn’t work) to try and change all your habits in one single swift action, that's unrealistic. Instead, keep mental inventory of the decisions that you make every day which will affect your long-term living situation. You won't have to go far to find them, either.
Indeed, these kinds of decisions can be found all over the place. What you eat, who you hang out with, what you do in any given day, what you say are all the kinds of decisions that would fall within this category. This being the case, my request will be that you mind those decisions and try to modify them in the capacity that they will affect you long-term. In other words, exchange the short-term pleasure for a long-term reward in some of them. Even one of them. You will notice (as I have) that making these minimal, though incremental changes will make a large difference in your live.
It's kind of curious how good you feel about yourself after doing this for some time. If we can revisit the short-term, long-term self-concept for a moment, you will become your own best long-term friend. Your effort towards creating the right situations will still be there, but it will no longer be a burden, but something that you actually enjoy. Furthermore, you will be constantly surprised at how good you look and feel just because you're keeping care of yourself. It's a wonderful feeling, so go get your own fix of it. Just be patient. See what I did there?
TL;DR:
- Patience can be a great ally or a terrifying enemy and it’s entirely up to you to decide which one.
- Don’t try to change your reality through consumption, be a crafty consumer.
- Be patient about the right things and things will happen naturally.
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