The Life-Changing Art Of Waiting

“There are times when the only thing to do is wait. The seed has been planted, the child is growing in the womb, the oyster is coating the grain of sand and making it into a pearl.” — Osho

Patience is a virtue, they say. Good things come to those who wait, apparently. So why does waiting for something feel so damn hard sometimes?

Worldwide lockdown has forced many of us to sit down, look in the mirror at our overgrown, unbrushed heads and face a slow, uncomfortable truth. We don’t like waiting.

Personally, I didn’t realise how painfully impatient I was until I was forced to stare down the barrel of stillness for three long months.

This may have something to do with the fact that my (subconscious) life mantras have always been along the lines of:

Go for the things you want in life.

Be proactive and productive at all times.

If you want something done, ask a busy person.

So slowing down and accepting that things would be out of my control for a while was a hard pill to swallow. I wanted to keep moving.

Surely, stillness means stagnant? And stagnant means stale? I thought.

Approaching my 30th year on this planet has made me more impatient. I want to travel the world and reach my career goals before settling down. I want to socialise while I’m still young enough to go to bars and not look out of place.

Not being able to do these things for now, during lockdown and the precious final 12 months of my twenties, has confronted me with something I previously didn’t realise was a problem.

I cannot just be.

My self-worth and self-esteem are so closely tied with doing.

Just being feels… lazy, pointless, idle, a waste of time.

Meanwhile, as a growing number of my friends birth beautiful little babies and the number of wedding invitations delivered to my door increases every year, I occasionally feel equally impatient about getting married, having children and buying a house. All the grown up stuff you think you should do before you’re 30.

For many of us, waiting for those things alongside a social media clock of comparison (and biology), can induce pangs of anxiety too.

Waiting can force us into a period of deep introspection — and, for people like me — that can breed anxiety, depression and a dire sense of restlessness.

Waiting For The Ripe Time

Fortunately, I’m a big fan of trying to reframe my perspective from negative to positive, especially when it comes to things that are mostly out of my control.

In the orchard of life, I’m learning to believe that our fruits will be bigger, juicier and more worth waiting for if we allow them to ripen in their own time. Picking them from the ground, rather than too early from the tree, lets us know that they were ready to fall.

In these situations, all you can do is relax and wait. Nature has its own clock and it is neither right nor wrong. It just is.

You cannot will for the fruit to fall any faster. It simply falls at the right time.

So how do we reshape ‘waiting’ from a ‘waste of time’ into something more useful? How do we wait gracefully and feel content in the void, rather than anxious?

How do we transform the static silence into sacred guidance and nurture a fruitful space for growth?

Live Vicariously

In normal times, this may seem counterintuitive. Why live through someone else when you can focus on creating the life you want and experience its many joys yourself?

Well, when the life you want is not accessible for a while, it may be better to live vicariously through someone else than to sit and fester in your own feelings of impatience and self-pity.

But do note, there is a difference between FOMO and vicariousness. Fear of missing out is just that, a fear. A fear that everyone else is enjoying lockdown more than you. Being more productive than you. Having better relationships than you. In a better financial position than you. Etc.

Fear produces suffering. It creates envy, jealousy, pain and negative energy.

Instead, we can observe others and appreciate their good fortune. Being happy and supportive of them — rather than jealous — shifts those negative emotions into positive ones.

Buddhism even has a word for it: Mudita. The pleasure that comes from delighting in other people’s happiness and success.

We’ve all heard about the Law of Attraction. Essentially, it’s the theory that positivity is a magnet for more positivity. Positive thoughts bring positive experiences. And vice versa with negative thoughts.

When it comes to waiting, it’s about trusting that your time will come and trying your best to remain positive in the meantime.

Being first isn’t always best when it comes to life events. Those who tie the knot first aren’t more likely to have happy marriages. Those who seem most successful in their jobs aren’t necessarily more likely to feel fulfilled, enjoy longevity in their careers or foster a good work-life balance.

Trusting that things will happen when they are supposed to happen, is a big life lesson I have learned recently.

“You’ll get the job, the partner, the house, the car, etc. Just don’t rush the process; trust it. You have to grow into your dreams.” — Vex King

The Desire Is In The Delay

An old proverb tells us that desires are nourished by delay. But do our desires grow stronger because of the delay or only exist because of it?

The gap between desire and acquire is an important one. It’s the difference between moderation and addiction. It’s the feeling of having earned something rather than simply being given it.

It stops us getting bored and taking things for granted. When we have something that we want on tap, we no longer desire it so strongly.

Unfortunately, as humans, we have an annoying habit of wanting what we cannot have. So when something is taken away, we appreciate it more. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and all that jazz.

It can be helpful to acknowledge that we only feel stifled by impatience because we cannot have the things we want right now. If life were continuing as normal and we were busy doing the things that distracted us, we may not feel like we were lacking anything in the first place.

On which note, you’ve probably heard about the Stanford marshmallow experiment.

In 1972, ninety children were given the option to eat one marshmallow immediately or wait 15 minutes and be rewarded with two marshmallows.

The results were mixed and there is some debate about whether the link between the kids who waited (and happened to do better in life later down the line) was due to their natural ability to be patient, or because of their socioeconomic background. Either way, the patient kids had better outcomes in life.

But for me, what’s most interesting about the experiment was in the second round of observation, when some children were encouraged to think about the reward during the waiting time, while others were distracted to think about something else.

The results seemed to show that not thinking about a future reward actually enhances your ability to delay gratification, rather than focusing your attention on the future reward. It was the exact opposite of what the scientists predicted.

Essentially, by thinking about something too much we inhibit our ability to wait for it. So when practising the art of waiting (for things outside of our control at least), it’s time to shift our thoughts elsewhere and not get hung up on what we want but don’t currently have.

Otherwise, it just makes the wait more agonising. It also makes you less likely to actually get to the end result; the bigger reward.

Self-Worth Is Key

“In silence and waiting something inside you goes on growing: your authentic being.” — Osho

A dinner table tradition we developed as a family during lockdown was to take it in turns to ask a question each evening: “If you could be someone famous, who would you be?” or “If you could live in a different era, which would you choose?” and so on.

One evening, my brother asked: “If you could enhance one thing about yourself, what would it be?”

We took turns answering. Being able to sleep better, heal physical problems and improve concentration, are what came up for my family.

When my turn came, I did not flinch with my answer:

“The ability to find peace from within, and not rely on validation from others.”

For some time I have realised that my sense of self-worth comes directly from the outward perception that I am somehow succeeding in life.

I am ambitious and have always been a high-achiever academically and career wise — juggling a portfolio of jobs, a busy social life and regularly having opportunities to travel.

Poor me, I know.

But living your life in this way can come with its own deep-seated problems too. From a young age, like many people, I was indoctrinated with the belief that worthiness, love and validation only comes from others and how they see you, and not from within yourself.

Recently, I learned the hard way. As a result of the pandemic, I lost my job overnight. And then all the upcoming freelance jobs I had lined up.

Soon after that, I went through a break-up and moved home and back in with my parents. My exterior world of ‘success’ crumbled instantly.

Everything I valued about myself: my independence, social circle and the notion that I was lovable, disappeared. The rug was violently pulled from underneath me, and what was I left with?

The stark opportunity to turn inwards and learn how to value myself on my own, without those things.

It’s been a painful, but ultimately transformative, life lesson.

Narrate Your Own Story

In the The Mastery of Love, Don Miguel Ruiz writes: “You are what you believe you are. There is nothing to do except to be just what you are. You have the right to feel beautiful and enjoy it. You can honour your body and accept it as it is.”

Wait. So you can just decide to be beautiful? You can just decide to believe whatever you want about yourself?

Ruiz continues, “You don’t need anyone to love you. Love comes from the inside. It lives inside us and is always there, but with that wall of fog, we don’t feel it.”

Sadly, this concept is so far removed from what has been drilled into us by society throughout our entire lives. It might seem difficult to fathom, but it is possible to unravel those tightly-woven knots that have been restricting our ability to breathe love and acceptance of ourselves from our own lungs.

And waiting becomes a lot easier when we can breathe properly.

Loneliness, Uncertainty and Boredom

“The phone gives us a lot but it takes away three key elements of discovery: loneliness, uncertainty, and boredom. Those have always been where creative ideas come from.” — Lynda Barry

In periods of isolation, our phones keep us connected, informed and stimulated. But what if these things were the antithesis of a creative mind?

As a person who does a ‘creative’ job, this was a revelation to me. Especially since my work life tends to revolve around my phone and laptop screen.

And yet we all know that some of the best albums, artworks and films were born out of heartbreak, suffering and, probably, boredom.

But the idea of ‘sitting with’ your negative emotions — anxiety, loneliness, anguish, sadness — and simply observing them, is easier said than done. Especially if you’re a highly sensitive soul like I am.

But when you reshape uncertainty and sadness into seeds from which creativity and inner strength can grow, it can transform periods of pain into something more nourishing in the long-run.

It’s about patiently allowing those emotions to run their course, and trying not to beat yourself up about it in the meantime. It may not be easy, but as Vex King wisely reminds us in his book Good Vibes, Good Life:

“Just because you can’t see the point behind a challenging time, doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”

Practising Gratitude

“Gratitude turns what we have into enough.” — Aesop

When suffering from severe bouts of impatience, ‘practising gratitude’ can feel like a worn cliché that pastes pretty wallpaper over a gaping hole in the wall — one that you’ve punched yourself.

But the fact is that wanting what you don’t have is a sure fire way to spoil the appreciation of what you already have in the here and now.

Here’s three suggestions of ways you can practise true gratitude:

1. Think about something you value — a person, your house, your car, a pet. Now imagine that it is gone forever. How do you feel? This can help you feel more tangibly grateful for it.
2. Think back to when you were 4 years old. Now 14 years old, then 24 years old. How would your younger selves feel about what you have right now? (Note: They’d be bloody impressed and extremely grateful.)
3. Write down at least one thing you are grateful for each day. Cultivating this habit keeps a culture of gratitude flowing through your mind daily.

What Have I Learned?

“We have forgotten to wait; we want everything in a hurry. It is a great loss to humanity.” — Osho

In crafting my own chaotic painting of ‘patience’ over the last few months, I have learned that waiting usually means wanting. And wanting is the (perceived) concept that we are lacking something in our lives. Lives which are largely shaped by the suffocating constructs of a society that tells us we are only worth something when we are busy achieving, doing, producing.

Practising patience doesn’t have to mean indifference, apathy or lethargy — it can mean being open and ready to receive something new and beautiful, and we can do so with quiet anticipation and trust.

So, rather than endlessly striving for external validation — the opposite of inner peace and patience — I’m learning to ease back and allow in some equanimity instead.

The outcome? I’ll just have to wait and see.