From Impatience to Gratitude: Learning to Wait Well
Old Faithful
Old Faithful, I have been coming here to watch her erupt for as long as I can remember. First discovered and named by the Washburn Expedition in 1870, Old Faithful got its name due to its predictable eruptions. In the 1930s, it erupted about every 66 minutes, but today, you can count on an eruption every 94 minutes, give or take 10. Tonight's prediction was 7:55 PM, and sure enough, at 7:56 PM, she began sputtering boiling water into the air, and by 7:58 PM, boiling water was reaching over 130 feet in the air. The crowd was oohing and awing as hundreds snapped pictures at the site. Old Faithful delivered once again.
I have been here plenty of times when she was closer to the 104-minute mark, and when that happens, the crowd gets a little antsy. People start to wonder, will she go off as predicted, or will Old Faithful not come through this time? You start seeing individuals looking around, impatience begins to set in, kids start to whine, parents hand out snacks to quiet the complaints, and then she erupts, and the waiting is over. The crowd's attitude immediately shifts from groans to delight and excitement as the water spews high into the air. A few minutes later, the water stops, and the people leave, chattering about this wonder of nature.
Waiting. There is so little that we wait for anymore. We have created a culture of immediate gratification, and waiting is the antithesis of that. As a people, we don't wait well anymore. Patience is, in many ways, a lost character trait, yet it can make such practical differences in our lives. Patience doesn't come naturally to me; I absolutely have to work at it. Over the last year, I have intentionally focused on becoming a more patient person, and it's working. I definitely haven't mastered patience, but here are the practical things I did to help.
I started by identifying two things that made me impatient. I live in Southern California, so naturally, one of them was traffic.
(1) I decided that whenever I was in traffic, I would choose to be patient instead of complaining and turn the waiting time into a time of gratitude.
(2) I created a list of things I would do when I hit traffic:
Thank God for the opportunity to slow down
Make a mental list of small things I am grateful for. For example, instead of saying I am thankful for my colleagues, I might say, "I am thankful that I had such a great conversation with Anna yesterday."
Reflect on the exercise I just completed.
Play a favorite podcast or music.
My second item was related to work. The lack of patience in the workplace is at an all-time high, and I began noticing more and more that people were demanding quick turnaround on items when it was not necessary. Presentations scheduled in a month would have an arbitrary completion date a few days after it was assigned. My friend Laura always says, "save your crisis for a crisis." But it seemed every assignment was being managed as if it were an emergency. In Tyranny of the Urgent, Charles E. Hummel says, "Your greatest danger is letting the urgent things crowd out the important." I saw this every day. I was neglecting essential things to tend to urgent things that really shouldn't have been urgent. This behavior significantly impacted my team members, and I decided I needed to change it. Here's what I did:
(1) The next time I received an urgent request, I evaluated the criticality. I asked myself:
What happens if this doesn't get done by the deadline?
Do I need to interrupt one of my people to perform this immediately?
Why is this really needed?
When will the information be used?
(2) If the request's timeframe and criticality were necessary, we completed the item as requested if I found the item to be unnecessarily prioritized or the date to be arbitrary, I would kindly push back on the requester and let them know that we had other priorities but would complete it by a more reasonable date.
I found that one out of five items actually required it to be done in the requested time frame. My team members appreciated my pushing back on their behalf. It not only improved their work-life balance, but it also decreased their stress, and it showed them that I believe the work they were already doing was important. It also helped to guide our culture towards patience and to wait versus a culture of now.
I eventually added several more items with practical steps for me to follow. Having a plan of action for these moments has not only helped me become a more patient person but a more thankful person. As my life changes, I imagine I will always be adding new scenarios that try my patience. I encourage you to start by picking one item that makes you feel impatient and consciously decide to respond patiently when you encounter it next time. You will certainly find yourself more grateful and less frustrated. It's more than that, though. Patiently waiting is the Godly thing to do. It's why I started working on this. I knew that patience was a fruit of the Spirit, and I knew this was an area of struggle for me. So I asked God to guide me and help me become more patient. I then identified the practical steps I would take to become more comfortable with waiting.
The Bible tells us in Romans 8:25, "But if we look forward to something we don't yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently."
Yesterday, at 7:57 PM, when Old Faithful faithfully started flowing, I looked around, took a couple of pictures, and watched as many people excitedly checked an item off their bucket lists. Kids and adults were pointing at it, jaws were hanging from a few, and there were a lot of smiles and exclamations; their waiting was rewarded. I find that patiently waiting reaps more rewards than anxious waiting. May we faithfully and patiently wait, whether it be for a new job, new relationship, work deliverables, flight delays, or something silly like Wi-Fi.
