When it comes to our lives, and our businesses in particular, we put in our efforts and then want the results right away. We invest time, money and both physical and emotional energy. We make choices and sacrifices. We put ourselves out there and take chances. Some of us pray often for our efforts to be successful and for our goals to come true. We weigh our decisions and push ourselves out of our comfort zones in the pursuit of our goals and dreams. Sometimes we may even feel like we’ve made a fool of ourselves in the process. Then we wait and expect the results we’ve been seeking. And when they don’t come as quickly as we would like, we get disappointed and may even consider giving up on our goal. We start wondering if it is really attainable after all and don’t know what else to do to achieve the results we would like. We second guess ourselves and our decisions and think that perhaps this type of dream wasn’t really meant to come true for us.
Patience and Faith are Key
I recently saw the movie The Vow. Two of the biggest lessons I learned from that movie were (1) that timing is so important and (2) having patience and faith is essential.
The movie tells the story of Paige and Leo, a couple deeply in love. After a car accident leaves Paige with no memory of the previous five years of her life–including meeting and falling in love with Leo–Leo is both hopeful and desperate to earn her love again. He tries everything he can think of – until he starts feeling like he’s not getting anywhere and that if she were going to fall in love with him again, she would have already. Eventually he gives up, loses faith and stops trying.
A Matter of Timing
There’s one thing that Leo didn’t fully take into consideration though. When Paige woke up from her accident, she thought that it was five years before, meaning that all the decisions and discoveries she had made during that time were erased from her memory. All the personal growth she had experienced during that time had seemingly vanished. And it was precisely that growth and those choices that had helped Paige become the woman she had been when Leo met her, the woman who would be ready both to love and be loved by him. She needed more time and space to grow into herself again. It was a matter of time and personal growth.
A Matter of Faith
In some ways it is similar for us. We do everything we can think of, and then some, and then wait expectantly for the positive results of our efforts. We get discouraged, maybe even losing some faith, when they take longer to arrive than we would like or don’t look the way we imagined they would.
What if it’s a matter of time? And of having the patience and faith to realize that by consistently persevering and putting in our efforts now, we may very well be building a strong foundation for the business–and life–of our dreams?
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