Let’s talk about patience and how having patience can help us achieve our goals faster. Sometimes we think of having patience as doing nothing when it can be the best “action” that you can take towards achieving your goals.

In this article I’ll discuss how a lack of patience drastically slowed down my achievement of a particular goal. For the past 4 years, I’ve been working on updating my website for my financial planning business. Unfortunately, in my haste to get the job done quickly, I took short cuts in the hiring process and ended up going through a series of firms that simply did not work out. I didn’t read the contracts or ask enough questions. I made assumptions about what was going to be done and didn’t take the time to check in and really understand the scope of what they were providing.

As time passed, I became more impatient with myself and had unreasonable expectations of others. I was at my wits end because I wanted the website to be done in the worst way! What did I do next? I hired an even more expensive contractor thinking that throwing more money at the project would solve my problem, nope! When that relationship ended, I was beside myself.

Here’s what I learned

Lack of patience slowed down the process

Knowing that I needed a new website, and that I didn’t have the skills or time to create one myself, I knew that I had to hire someone to help me. Here’s how it went, I would have somebody come in, do a presentation, show me a beautiful website, and I would say “you’re hired.”

Did I read the contract? No. Did I ask follow-up questions? No.

In hindsight, I should have taken the time to clearly write down what my expectations were for the job. I should have also met with 3 contractors and checked their references. I should have read the contracts and asked a lot of questions to confirm my assumptions, before hiring! My lack of patience with the hiring process literally added years onto the total time of the project.

Lack of patience with others

One of the things that happened was that my “expectations” for the project were not being met and I became increasingly impatient with some of the people working on this project for me. I was irritated when milestones were missed, and things just didn’t turn out the way I expected. And it’s not surprising since I didn’t take the time to clarify my expectations before the project started.

Then I became snappy and short. The other could tell I was irritated, no matter how hard I tried to hide it. They could hear it in my tone or read between the lines in emails. I feel like that lack of patience, that irritation we feel, because our expectations aren’t being met, can make another person underperform. It’s like the law of attraction, I was attracting a negative outcome. We have an article called “Getting Triggered and How to Handle It,” where we discuss what to do when you’re feeling frustrated with others.

Lack of patience with ourselves

One of the biggest downfalls I had in the project was that I was really mad at myself. I had wanted to have a “modern website” for a very long time, years before I even started the project. Clearly it was my fault and I started “should-ing” on myself. Thinking I should have done this, or I should have done that.

I was mad at myself and beat myself up quite a bit because this project that I wanted to get done wasn’t getting done.

There’s no value to beating yourself up. It doesn’t help anything when you’re impatient with yourself because you haven’t achieved a goal. Have you heard of S.M.A.R.T goals? SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound. There’s nothing SMART about SMART goals! “Time bound” is really where the trouble starts – when you put an artificial deadline on a goal and then beat yourself up because you didn’t meet that goal in an arbitrary timeline.

Try Doing This Instead

When you set a goal and want to achieve something, start by visualizing it. What will it look like when it’s done, what will it feel like? We tend to get hung up on the mechanics of achieving a goal and wondering “how” we’ll accomplish the thing, when in reality, we just need to be crystal clear in the visualization of outcome.

The universe is surrounding us and helping us to achieve our goals, whatever they are, and if we just take a moment and have some patience, the universe can orchestrate some amazing and delightful circumstances to help you achieve your goal in the most optimal way.

As I began the process to launch Shine First you can imagine my concern about getting a website done. The fear of going through the same failed process as I did for the other website was palpable. And what ended up happening was quite delightful. I mentioned to Virginia Elder, my podcast producer, that I was getting ready to do my website for Shine First Today and she said, let me introduce you to my friend Margaret Cogswell, she does a great job.

Does she ever! Margaret and her team have done an amazing job, total logo design, website, blog, the works, total time – start to launch – about 8 weeks.

She really understood my vision and when I saw the first draft of the site – I literally cried! I couldn’t believe how perfect it was, I loved the colors and photo’s, I loved the vibe and every single design element. It was absolutely magical. And yes, I’ve hired her to redo my financial planning website too!!!

Being patient and taking your time to do something can feel like doing nothing, like not acting. When we want something to happen in our lives, taking the time to clearly define your goals, and interviewing multiple people, and checking references, can seem incredibly time consuming. But having patience for a process can actually allow you to achieve your goal faster as well as allowing the universe to work its magic and create opportunities for you.

The universe wants nothing more than to surprise and delight you! Taking a little bit of time to allow things to happen for you is an incredibly satisfying way to interact with the world around you. It takes so much pressure off, by knowing that I have a goal, and I know the universe will help me achieve it, if I have the patience to allow things to line up properly.

I’d love to know if you experienced a time in your life where you had a lack of patience and how you handled it, what did you do? Please let us know in the comments below.

If you’re looking for more support on your journey and you want to join a lovely community of like-minded people, please head over to our website at ShineFirstToday.com, where we have a number of resources to help guide you on your journey. I’m sending you light and love. I hope you have an amazing rest of your day.