Success Requires Patience

By Cathy Chapman, Ph.D.


Once people learn to walk and talk, if able to do so without difficulty, they seem to forget that it took time and patience to succeed at these very complex tasks. There were more times of misspoken words or tumbles on the floor than could be counted. Parents often smiled or laughed at the imperfect attempts to learn these skills now performed with little or no thought.

Success Takes Patience

Whenever you attempt to learn something new, you have to give yourself time to acquire the fundamentals of your soon to be new skill. There is a complex interaction and imprinting occurring in the brain. New neural pathways are being traced every time you try something new. As you practice it, the neural pathways strengthen.

Nature, not technology, is the metaphor for time and success. A healthy human baby takes a full nine months. You might be able to get by with 8.5 months, but every parent worries when a baby comes much earlier than that.

As wonderful as technology is, its instant gratification model gives the false impression that you can accomplish great things in moments. Yes, it takes much less time to edit a book you've put in your computer, but it still involves butt-time in the chair with fingers hitting the keyboard to have anything worth editing.

From Idea to Completion

Think of your idea as a seed and your mind, from which your idea came, as the fertile soil it will grow in. Your idea needs time to incubate. Once you acknowledge it by bringing it into your conscious mind and affirm it by saying, "Yes, I want this to happen," your unconscious mind begins to allow the idea to grow roots and a stem.

You feed and water your idea by giving it time, sketching out plans, gathering information and talking about it with mentors. Your idea continues to grow as you itemize the objectives that will move you on the road to success. Once you have the information and learning you need to get started, you take the first step on the journey. Your seed has pushed through the top of the soil.

Success Includes Mishaps

Just as you fell often on your diapered bottom when you learned to walk, you will fall on your road to accomplishing your goals. You will try certain strategies and some will work and others won't. The key is to have patience with the process. When a strategy doesn't work out, that simply means you have gathered information about what not to do. You come up with additional options and try those.

The only failure is quitting. Ask Thomas Edison, the inventor of the incandescent light bulb. He tried more than 1000 different elements for the filament in the light bulb. Time and patience is what moved society from oil lamps to electric lamps.

Cathy Chapman, PhD, LCSW has her doctorate in Mind-Body Psychology. She assists people in achieving their dreams of health, wealth and abundance. Learn how to access your personal power by reading the Special Report "7 Methods for a Practically Impenetrable Immune System." Go to http://www.OdysseyToWholeness.com.