Slowly, Then All at Once

One of the hardest things to do in life is be patient. The most rewarding things in life take time. Although we all get lucky once in a while, if you examine the lives of successful people you will notice that they have one thing in common: patience.

The thing about accomplishing your goals is that you usually see the majority of results towards the end of your journey. Many investments work this way. Let’s say you invest early in a start-up, in the first 5–8 years you may see no returns, but in year 9 you receive a large pay-out. This happened slowly, but then all at once. The reality is that you were growing every year but not being rewarded, so it seemed like nothing was happening People tend to forget that the reward usually comes all at once, but it takes a lot of patience to stay on course.

Let’s walk through another scenario. For the past year, you have been trying to get a job at a company you admire. You are qualified for a new position that is being advertised but have applied to the company five times before. On the 6th time you apply, you say “forget this, they will never hire me”. If you stop applying now, then you are guaranteed to never get the job. But what if after the 8th application you get good news and the company wants to hire you? Remember, just when you tell yourself you should quit, your reward is on the other side.

I’m sure by now you’ve seen this this classic meme:

I’m not saying you should never quit and move on in life. Perhaps the hardest thing is knowing when to actually quit because it’s not always worth being patient. When do we know when to give up? In situations where passion is lost, interest in the subject matter is lost, or if an investment does not make sense anymore. There can be a host of reasons, but the reason should NEVER be “that it’s taking too long, why haven’t I achieved this yet”.

This article is meant to remind you that most good things in life take time. And many times, the “good” or “reward” comes towards the end of a hard journey. And although some things in life are rewarded incrementally, some aren’t. Patience is the name of the game. Best of luck out there.

Wassim