A long time friend and I was having a conversation in the car the other day, on our way home, coming from the airport. We were catching up. We haven’t seen each other in practically over a year now. Before going further into the story, let me give a little bit of context. He’s way older than me, basically, I regard him as a parent figure. Rightly so, because I know for a fact that he wants to see me succeed. But, when I say that we were catching up, that was essentially him asking questions to try and figure out on where I was at in life in general. Not surprisingly, almost all of my answers gravited around the fact that I needed more time. I told him that as the new kid on the block, I needed more time to experience new things, to fail, to study my surroundings, and to learn from other people’s successes and failures before I can come up with the formula that works for me. But the expression on his face was the feedback that quickly let me know that he wasn’t too happy with my answers. The tell the truth, he looked at me very disappointed. I didn’t let that distract me though. I went on to tell him about the role that having ‘patience’ plays in everybody’s success. I might have somewhat been procrastinating a little bit here and there, but under no circumstance, should the role of time be downplayed. It’s a fact, important things take time. There’s no such a thing as overnight success. So, the conversation ended on this note.
Someone once told me, succeeding is like putting a puzzle together, it requires effort for sure, but patience is a prerequisite.
But as I was writing this post, “The Story of the Chinese Bamboo Tree” came to my mind. It’s a very interesting story about patience and success. Matt Morris did a brilliant job telling it. You should definitely check it out here.
The point I wanted to make is, sure go ahead burn the midnights oil, wake up early, be the last person to leave the office, lift them weights, run the miles, put in the work... but, no matter what you do, keep in mind, for the results to show up, most of the time, it takes time.