Patience
I am a nerd for cheesy quotes and little inspiring messages that fill our feeds. I love to relate motivation from others to my own life. But as I get older all the cliche sayings I heard as a child that my coaches, family, friends, and mentors told me are starting to make sense. I was not exactly sure how I wanted to write in this blog but today I realized I just want to share what I have the urge to share. I write to myself all the time and I have so many notes filled on my computer, phone, and journal about things and days I write about. I explain this because this post may seem similar to the last, but it dives more into depth about a few concepts I love to talk about. I am going to share my thoughts on the way it feels best for me because I believe if I start simple and just flow into deeper thoughts, I think this will help people create better connections to my work. I feel like a natural flow to anything we do is the best way to express and feel anything. So often in our society, we create with the original pattern presented. We try to make everything artsy and pretty or maybe even post a picture like our friend did because we loved the way they did it. This is COMPLETELY ok. But I say this as a reminder to step outside the box and flow how you flow. With that being said, today I want to dive into my current perception of…
Patience.
As I explained in my last post, I started my first year out of high school with lots of confusion. I did not know exactly how I wanted to go about my first year out of high school. So instead of setting a physical goal I decided to set a mental goal for the end of the year. I told myself no matter where I go, I mentally want to improve… because in simple understanding, me not knowing what I wanted to do next just meant I needed more time to learn about myself! Honestly, time that I really never used to do so in high school. You learn bits and pieces about yourself in high school but to me, it almost felt like a trance distracting me from the real world. I did not hate high school; in fact, I made amazing memories but there is no doubt once you leave it you will experience some sort of confusion. It is natural, do not stress it!
The goal I set for myself resulted in something I was struggling with at the time. And that is understanding the concept of patience. “Stay patient” is a saying I heard my whole life from the world and those around me. We are told not to stress and trust that there is something for us and that good things take time. This is a prime example of a cliche saying I did not understand, until this year. However, I made learning this concept my mental goal for my first year out of high school. I wanted to trust in it and live through it.
Long story short, you cannot just understand patience immediately, which is why I made it my yearly goal to do so. I chose to do so because I knew I had so many different paths I wanted to take after high school and so many things I wanted to do. I found myself rushing to tell people my great ideas and I rushed myself to try and jump into every single one of them. This stressed me out, I was putting pressure on myself because I did not know what I wanted to do. I was not being patient with myself. And this is where I believe the process of patience starts, with being patient with yourself. First starting to consciously implement it into my life began with being present in every moment no matter what it was. If I was driving, I was present with the drive, if I was working out, I was present in my workout, and if I was in class I was present in class. I began to find more things I enjoyed and placed them into my life more and more and I also removed things I did not enjoy. I learned from the early workings of patience that I was in control of my everyday life. In simpler terms, I began to find a place for everything I loved in my life. I was not worried that by the end of the year, I must end up with a 4.0 GPA or that I must accumulate all these awards and acknowledgments from my sports career. Physically I was not worried where I would end up, mentally I was growing and learning more about myself. Patience is one of the root causes of a happy life and it influences so many more things in our lives than we can even understand.
As I grew deeper into the process, I found out I was passionate about my sports career I had built throughout my life. I played softball and basketball at my local technical college this year while taking general classes to figure out what I am interested in. Playing sports again was one of the best decisions I have made and when I made this decision, I told myself I would never look back. I began to be patient with these two sports as well. I understood my potential and began to attack it day by day. This was one of most successful sports seasons and I loved every minute of it because I felt mentally clearer during both, this made me WANT to work harder. Also, as I dug deeper into the classroom, which was hard for me to do in high school, I found my calling. I began to take more and more critical thinking classes because I was just interested in them at the time! I started piecing together passion and knowledge in the classroom and realized I genuinely want to devote my career to studies and a better understanding of mental health in our society. Seriously, I credit all these personal discoveries to living a patient year and not stressing the future but being present in the moment. Like I said before it is so cliche, but it is the simple words and ideas that have so much meaning because no more than the word itself can explain the concept, you must live through it to understand.
Another thing patience has taught me this year is hard work. I used to stress hard work and tell myself I must do this to get better, which is true we must work hard to get better at anything in life. But I do not think we should stress it! We must fall in love with every up and down in our practice, and being present in the moment of each up and down is how we do so. Before I was conscious about patience, I put a lot of stress into my life and was so invested in living a “perfect” everyday life. One where you wake up early and go to bed early, one where everything is in the correct spot, and one where I accomplish one hundred things in a day. But this stressed me out! I was not flowing how I flow and was trying to flow like everyone else living a “perfect” life. Yes, some of these things might be my flow but that was not how I lived them. It is so easy in our society to unconsciously follow everyone else to get better, but we must live our lives.
If I wake up late now, I do not immediately start my day with pressure and anger towards my life because I did so, I just start my day! In the later months of my first year out of high school I began to reflect on a deeper message patience has taught me this year. This message eliminated the last control stress that had over my mind. I started to think about my productivity and realized earlier in the year I had been getting up early, taking better care of my body, and was overall in my eyes at the time more productive. I originally was sad at the thought of this but then I realized I would not let myself think like this anymore. We as humans are constantly testing our own flow every day to see what is best for us and we do not even know it! I then realized how productive I was in different aspects of my life during the year's later months. I had understood now what different periods of practice and performance look like in my life. I was in a state of practice during the earlier months and a state of performance in the later ones. Understanding this and taking time to reflect on the year of growth made me want to just work harder in periods of practice so I can perform better in periods of performance. And at the same time, learn how to find a flow where I can create longer periods of both! See now, there is nothing to look back on and hate, dread, or stress but we look back in our lives to understand who we are. There. Is. Nothing. To. Stress.
Patience is something I believe everyone should be conscious about and consciously implement into their own flow. We all have our own experiences that we can connect to this concept, and I hope it influences you to keep your patience strong and your stress weak.