Impatience is thought of as negative. What if it’s not?
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There are times where we’re all impatient. We can’t wait for that delivery of delicious food or for our brand new phone to arrive or for our friend to drive up the driveway so we can go out for an enjoyable Saturday night.
The traditional advice is to keep calm and be patient to get what you want. That advice can definitely be helpful in certain situations, but so can being impatient.
Being impatient has the following advantages:
- It creates urgency
- It drives you to an outcome
- It makes you be unreasonable
These three advantages of being impatient contribute to the brilliance it creates in your life. I’m one of those people who, at times, is quite impatient. I want everything done yesterday and waiting is not something I was born to do very often.
Impatience Applied to Creative Endeavors
As a writer, impatience has served me well. By being too impatient to run a website, I found Medium, and that was a game-changer.
By being too impatient to build an audience, I borrowed other people’s by being a guest writer on their blog.
By being impatient, I decided to produce 40 blog posts a month — which meant I could find my writing voice, get paid more, experiment more, and show up in people’s newsfeeds far more often. Through consistency and volume, I found who I was as a writer much faster.
Some of the best artists are impatient. The need to churn out an article or draw a picture or shoot the video for YouTube by sundown removes overthinking, the feeling like you’re not enough, your ego, and the steps that waste your time that you’d implement if you had all the hours in the world.
Impatience creates deadlines, and deadlines create finished art.
Impatience Applied to Disputes
I was working with a guy who was really pissing me off. He’d stop me from coming to meetings, be unhelpful, and hold me back in my career through his selfishness. One day, I came into the office being impatient and said to myself, “That’s enough, I’m doing something about this.”
That impatience led to the conversation that needed to be had and we were able to work it out and go on to work with each other happily ever after.
If it wasn’t for impatience, I would have kept enduring the pain, avoided the dispute, and done nothing to avoid confrontation.
Confronting a dispute is far better than letting it last and eating away at your will to live at the same time.
Impatience Applied to Business
Ever met a business owner that’s not impatient?
They’re tweaking their business model.
They’re ‘getting ready for launch.’ (5–4–3–2–1 — no lift-off!)
They’re gathering data about potential customers.
They’re testing out the buy button a million times and A/B testing what might happen when someone clicks it and sees a blue background instead of a purple one.
They’re frolicking around waiting for something to happen, and they’re completely calm and patient in the process. Then, they run out of money and blame the market or their co-founder.
Impatience in business is a freaking superpower because it focuses your mind on getting money into your bank account so you can keep the lights on and live the dream for another week or two.
Impatience in business causes you to run faster and find a way when your competitors might be cruising or comfortable with how their taxi business is going until Uber/Lyft knocks on their doors and screams in their face “we’re quicker, easier, safer and cheaper — take that, amigo!”
Being impatient in business leads you to make money faster because you feel like you have to, thanks to ya mate impatience.
Being Impatient Is Responsible for the Outcomes
That’s the truth when it comes to pretty much everything I’ve ever tried in life. For years, I was trying to be more patient or take my time until I realized that impatience was what was building my dreams for me.
It gives you the drive to be a little unreasonable and ask for things that you may not be ready for or that you haven’t earned.
I asked to write on other people’s blogs when I wasn’t qualified. I charged for my time as a coach when others with more experience were doing it for free. I was unreasonable enough to tell someone that I’m not going to deal with their shit any longer and it was a blessing that saved my career.
Seriously, don’t underestimate impatience in your life.
Impatience creates deadlines, gives you urgency, and builds dreams you didn’t think were possible. I owe so much to the god of impatience. Bless you, lordy-lord for all you’ve done. Mwah!
It’s OK to be impatient. Being impatient is bloody brilliant.
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