"Your greatest strength is your sincerity, your greatest weakness is your impatience"
In listening to a lesson on Kryia Yoga this morning, a particular statement captured my attention. It stated, “your greatest strength is your sincerity, your greatest weakness is your impatience. You want everything now. Ten lifetimes to become enlightened? That’s too long! 10 hours, ten minutes, I might get bored!”
I thought of how this idea relates to my work with clients looking to improve their lives or businesses. Often they have a vision of what they want but are impatient for the results to manifest. They want what they want right now! There is no time for growing or gestation, they want the results immediately.
The challenge with this approach to life or business is that it removes our focus from the present and places our minds in either the past or the future. When our thoughts are in the past, the focus is generally on what we should have done differently, or on enjoying what was. When we cast our minds to the future, we are either living in our imagination or our fear of what will happen should our vision not materialize. This way of living creates anxiety and self doubt.
While it has been shared many times, the valuable lesson here is to live in the moment. Enjoy the process of becoming rather than casting our minds to a different time. If we can cultivate patience and enjoy the process of growth, we have a freedom available to us which is elusive when we live in fear and anxiety.
I’ve worked with clients who grow impatient that they haven’t changed 30 years of old habits in a week’s time. My counsel to them is to be patient. It’s taken a lifetime to cultivate our current habits, so allow a little more time to reshape our daily patterns. The results we seek will manifest as we grow and develop healthier beliefs and habits. However, this takes some time.
The same holds true in business. A client of mine once shared with me her fear of failure because she hadn’t yet filled her client roster. She’d been in business less than two months! While it’s not impossible to have immediate success, creating a mindset of fear and doubt was actually working against her. Our work together focused on returning her attention to her initial excitement and passion for coaching, while taking practical steps to work towards her goals.
As you move through your world today, I invite you to explore your own mindset. If you feel moved to do so, you might consider answering the following questions. Where am I feeling impatient in life? How is my impatience impacting my ability to enjoy the process of ‘creating’? Today, I will cultivate more patience by ________.
Remember, we only have the moment that we are living in now. When our actions align with a positive mindset, in the moment, we are able to enjoy both freedom and creation.