1. Patience

What was one thing I learned from this month?

• Be patient

I told myself that I was going to be intentional about reflecting on how my day, week, month and year went. I have always been advised to journal and write/reflect on how things have been and to see what I have and have not achieved and worked towards them. So hence the start of ‘End of month Evaluations’.

**I believe I am a naturally patient person. But that does not mean that I am patient all the time. Sometimes I get frustrated. Sometimes I get agitated. But whilst reflecting, I realised that in certain areas, I become impatient. And I had to understand that things take time. I expected my blog, Facebook and Instagram page to flourish immediately – of course, they didn’t! I mean for goodness sake, I started up this blog last year and only started becoming consistent this month, but two weeks ago. Things are not going to be quick. Things take time and construction. And that is when ‘being honest with yourself’ ties in with this.

What I have learnt is that patience takes time to nurture and learn. It doesn’t always come naturally. As human beings, we are naturally impulsive and reactive. Sometimes we do not stop to think or breathe or just be still. And these are the things I am working on. Learning to endure, learning to trust the process and learning to wait – to not rush, skip, glide and jump the queue. Because doing all of those things gives room for small, big and silly mistakes to be made – things that could have easily been avoided. It doesn’t allow room for you to evaluate and analyse the situation you are in, simply because you are in a rush with your thoughts and feelings all over the place.

Imagine this: You want to be the first to arrive at an event an hour before it starts, knowing that everyone else will arrive 30 minutes before the start of the event. You think you are running late. You think that because you are apparently leaving and running late you won’t make it in time for the train. So as you are rushing, you remember to take everything with you but your contactless card/oyster card (let us pretend google/apple pay does not exist). You now arrive at the train station. You realise that in actual fact, you are 7 minutes early. You want to tap the reader machine so you can pass through the barriers but somehow you cannot find your card. You start to search frantically for your card and it takes you approximately 2 minutes to get to the correct platform. In that time of waiting for 5 minutes for the train, it would allow you the freedom to quickly grab a coffee. But you cannot do any of that because you cannot find your card. You place your bag on the floor and start to pull out all the items in your bag – this time, roughly 3 minutes have passed. You have 4 minutes to make the train. It then dawns on you that you left your card on the kitchen counter at home and it takes you about 15 minutes to journey back home to collect your card. You are now punching the air and screaming internally due to feeling frustrated that you are now going to be late and will miss the train as a result. This will either cause you to take a cab, change the route or cause you to go home if you desperately need your card, outside the rationale for public transport.

You THOUGHT you were running late when it wasn’t actually the case. And because you thought you were running late, you decide to rush and not think about making a quick note to ensure you have all the essential things you would need for the day. Had you not been in a rush and thought things through before leaving, you could have made it on time as planned. But we always tend to think about wanting to be the first or we want to get things over and done with and out of the way, so we become impatient and start to jump ahead of ourselves. And then we wonder why things crumble or don’t make sense and that is because we became impatient. Now the example I made may not fit the point I actually made but the moral of the story is when we rush, we miss the key details and smallest things that paint a bigger picture because we did not make time to pay attention, think and wait. We allowed the feelings of frustration and presumably anger to take control, which then leads to our delay and disappointment. And we are back at square one.
Sometimes it is not about when we get there but HOW we get there. Fast or slow, you will get to your designated destination in due time. Take time to process. Learn to be patient.

They often ask “was it worth the wait?” but in this case… Was it worth the rush???

I am learning to be more patient and to NEVER rush anything in this life. It rarely ends well and you will find yourself in a loophole, going round and round because you keep missing the most important thing and that is paying detail to the smaller things. You may need your card for everything as it is a necessity. Sometimes you may not but in required circumstances where cash may be useless, you must take time to make sure you have done the right thing and have everything you need so that you do not forget or leave anything behind that will delay you or in the worst-case scenario, fail you.

Looking forward to what August teaches me.
A happy new month in advance!!