PATIENCE MONTH: DAY 16: “If you focus on results and finding shortcuts, you’ll get impatient. If you focus on the process and doing the right thing, you’ll be unstoppable.” ― Maxime Lagacé
We are very impatient when we are young…we want to learn to walk and then to talk. Then to run and play and get away from parental authority and do things on our own. As we age and develop, if that is in a healthy environment, we grow into independence and maturity. If it is not a healthy environment, we grow into dependencies and remain immature, as we seek avenues of escape that are not authentic. We remain impatient, and yet have no skills to mature independently as adults.
This may go on well into our 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond. We want what we want, and we want it NOW. That is not an attitude of maturity. It is going to cause us a great deal of frustration, pain, and trouble in relationships with the world around us.
When we understand that process is where we need to sit still, it is going to become much less painful to keep butting our heads up against our character defects and shortcomings. We can let go of the results of our efforts in recovery and put the work in without expectations of finishing the work. That is what recovery is all about. Work that never ends, but goes on for a lifetime. We are never “done.” It is just not possible to eradicate all of the old ideas and behaviors at once.
So, we must be patient with life, with our own growth and development into becoming adults and acting like adults, and the process that is as slow as we are supposed to grow.
We don’t get a timetable, schedule, or any guarantees of how this happens. Just like we don’t get a map showing us the path ahead of time. It unfolds, just one day at a time, one step at a time, and there is plenty of room for surprises and sidetracks. That is life. And we are here to grow into acceptance and learning to accommodate that which is not in our control. (Hint: NONE of it is in our control.)
Dolphin Hug 