Your Life Will Change the Second You Stop Waiting
Often we are told that waiting is always worthwhile. That we have to be patient because good things will always come our way. But, we must never go to the extreme of living out our lives in “pause mode,” allowing our present to pass us by.
According to a study published in Boston Globe magazine, people, especially the younger population, always seek out immediate gratifications, because they lack short-term patience. However, in regards to future prospects and achieving goals, “the need for immediacy” is not so intense. We are capable of waiting long periods of time until “our moment” arrives..
Your life will begin to change the second you stop waiting and adjust your expectations to reality. We must be active agents in our present, creators of new thoughts and emotions that bring forth more innovative actions.
When waiting turns into a voluntary choice
Some make their entire existence an eternal waiting room where everything can be dreamed up, but nothing is ever truly achieved. Other people can’t stand a delay in their rewards or vital goals.
Obviously, we don’t all face these waiting periods the same way. Some people get impatient and desperate while others feel right at home. In the latter case, we can assume there’s a bit of what some people call a “modern evil,” procrastination.
Procrastination is the act of systematically putting off the tasks we should do. It’s a social and psychological phenomenon that doesn’t always simply have to do with laziness. It is the habit of delaying or postponing activities or projects, waiting for the future to sort them out.
Procrastinators tend to overestimate the time they have left to perform a certain task or finish a project. They think that it’s better to wait for the right time and moment. And this moment is of course never “here and now.”
We have to keep in mind that procrastination also takes place in people who are very active, who enjoy thinking up ideas, but never carry them out. This is because when the moment arrives, they have already changed their minds and have another objective in mind.
Things never come on their own. Destiny or fate may grant us good luck at a given time, but this isn’t very common. The future doesn’t sort things out if we don’t seize the movement and take action. Stop waiting and your reality will soon change.
Stop living in “pause mode”: be the architect of your own reality
Despite the fact that Leon Tolstoy said “everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait,” in reality, living in “pause mode” can make us fall into a state of frustration and helplessness.
In a study published by Psychological Science magazine in 1997, we were warned about how dangerous it can be to delay or postpone things or wait for the future to hand us our goals on its own.
We must be active agents of our own reality. And therefore, we need to keep these ideas in mind:
- Stop focusing your expectations only on tomorrow: By this we don’t mean that you shouldn’t take the future into account. We mean that in order to make our dreams come true, we have to act in our “here and now.”
- Stop expecting so many things from other people: having high expectations of the people around us only brings suffering. Await results from yourself, take on a realistic attitude about what surrounds you and allow yourself to be receptive instead of demanding with the people around you.
- There is no such thing as a perfect life, but there is a state in which you can be happy. With this idea we summarize once again the dangers of establishing high expectations. Perfection doesn’t exists. But what does exist is a wonderful balance in which you can be yourself and feel proud of what you have.
- Train your ability to act and decide without being afraid. Being the main character of your own story forces you to be an active agent of continuous transformations that must be carried out fearlessly.
Sometimes we spend our time dreaming about a future that, when it finally arrives, doesn’t bring us anything new. So we start waiting again, projecting towards the future. Instead of becoming frustrated, we should be capable of starting the changes, designing a plan, getting out of our comfort zone, touching the moon with the tips of our fingers every single time we can manage it… Without a doubt, we should always aim high.