Patience plus hard work = Success
Patience, Consistency with your goals = Success
Defined as “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, problems, or suffering without becoming annoyed or anxious”.
We’re told from a very early age that patience is a virtue. However, very few of us are ever really shown or taught how to be patient. Patience is not something we have; it is something we consciously do. Patience is like any other hard-earned discipline: The more we practice it, the more patient we become. One of the biggest 21st century hurdles is maintaining a healthy body, staying fit and reducing the risks of chronic diseases. It is no longer a rich men’s diet to be followed or stylish gym wear to show off, but a matter of urgency in order to live a longer more fulfilled life, free from lifetime medications and bodily discomforts.
Believe it or not, to successfully lose weight or flatten your stomach, you need patience and consistency. Allowing yourself to appreciate that small changes will eventually amount to the big transformation is the key to achieving any goal. Furthermore, we have to remain calm amid the big and small twists and turns that come with controlling cravings, maintaining healthy eating habits, staying consistent with daily fitness goals. It is only through being patient that we can truly learn from the curveballs which get thrown in our paths.
So before embarking on a weight loss and fitness journey, encourage yourself in the knowledge that “patience will get you there”. Staying on your path, daily, consistently, you will definitely succeed. Here are 6 benefits of practicing patience.
1. Positive rewards
Impatience is a habit, and so is patience. When we lack patience, we are unable to delay gratification for more than the moment, which fills us with frustration. Frustration is the emotional energy that drives “quitting.” When we’re impatient, we’re unable to beat the cravings or stick to the healthy meals or the daily or weekly fitness plan. We start to quit in order to start again, and we run this pattern over and over and we convince ourselves that losing weight or flattening the stomach is unattainable.
Changing a habit requires strong motivation. Patience can reward us with positive recognition, greater will power to stay consistent with your healthy meal plan, increased self-satisfaction, stronger zeal to reach your goal. Whatever the measure of realization looks like, surely it is the sum total of patience plus hard work.
2. Builds resilience
Successful people in any sphere of life, including the contestants of “The Biggest Loser”, set themselves apart from the rest of the pack by mastering the skill sets which lead to success. Patience gives us grit. It gifts us the ability to work steadily toward our goals. And when we reach our goals consistently, we build our resilience. Great achievements are developed through persevering, not giving up.
It is when we persist, despite the odds, the cravings, the painful workouts, that we achieve the desired levels of success we seek. Any endeavor that could potentially become a great success requires us to dedicate ourselves to a long, hard effort. This is only a possibility when we are patient with our progress, no matter how fast or slow it goes. So, strive to be the last “woman or man” standing, and others will see you as accountable, dependable and their first choice for someone to seek motivation from.
3. Self-possession
Patience puts us in direct control of ourselves. And there is no more powerful aid to success than self-possession. When we are patient, we give ourselves time to choose how to respond to a given situation or scenario or challenge, rather than get emotionally hijacked by our emotions. It allows us to stay gathered no matter what is happening. With self-management we build trust in our capacity to deal with whatever comes our way.
A lack of success or progress can almost always be boiled down to a lack of patience. The most basic reason for impatience is a lack of control. When we lack control, we lack understanding and insight. When we lack understanding and insight, we lack the ability to plan, communicate and set realistic expectations. But when we claim control over these issues, we get to bask in the rewards patience can deliver.
4. Tolerance
Patience increases our threshold of tolerance. It gives us the foresight to expect obstacles on our path and to deal with them diplomatically. When we expect challenges, we respond with more courage, strength and optimism. We understand that emotional discomfort is a part of any obstacle and accept that life’s curveballs are a natural part of the cycle; therefore, we don’t add any additional suffering, bitterness or revenge to the mix. Instead, we roll up our sleeves and prepare that healthy meal or do that fitness workout that we need to do.
The more easily we roll with the punches and learn to tolerate the cravings, pains, challenges and the unpredictable ebb and flow of the cycles of success, the less stress we experience and the more resilient we become.
5. Hope
Patience brings hope. Knowing that you will reduce and lower risk to contracting chronic diseases, brings a continued renewal of belief in our weight loss goals and, in the heights, we are striving to achieve. When we are hopeful, we have a natural resilience and willingness to keep trying because we trust in the possibility of a good outcome. As we succeed, slowly but surely, we come to understand that delay doesn’t equal denial.
6. Excellence
Patience develops excellence. Talent is long-earned patience. At the core of every true success is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement and the confidence that by persisting and being patient, something worthwhile will be realized. In this way, genius is nothing but a greater propensity for patience.
We fulfill our potential with patience. Through patience we are able to offer our distinctive mark of excellence to anything we set our mind to. This is no small thing, for the world desperately needs the best of what each of us has to offer.
Building your ideal body and maintaining it takes time. We cannot plant a seed and expect it to flower overnight. Success always begins with patience and the commitment to put in the work, consistency, diligence, necessary for excellence.
Yet patience is not easy to come by. Be the type of person who is making sound decisions based upon solid values rather than impulsive reactions. Patience is the one virtue that serves us well as humanity. Patience takes time and conscious effort to master, but impatience can lead to our demise. As Thomas Edison said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
