Growing up one of the most important lessons our parents wanted us to learn was that the results came with patience and waiting. You wait to finish school to choose your profession and then a job, then you wait to find a job and get your career in place to start looking for a partner.

After you’ve ticked that box you wait for the partner to be the right one to start a family with them.

Done! Moving on.

Now, you wait for your income to increase enough so the two of you could afford a house.

If some of these do not arrive when you expect, you just persuade yourself you’re impatient and should wait just a bit more.

So, you wait. And you wait. And you wait some more and hope for the best.

But this somehow just doesn’t seem right. What if the wait is endless? What if you just want something now?

There’s a struggle going on inside you - between what you want and what you think is possible. There can't possibly be an equal sign between the two, because we were taught to suppress some of our needs and learn that not everything in life can be had at our request.

But if you stop and think about it for a moment - why did you believe that you can't have your cake and eat it too?

Let’s see if we can clarify things and determine what or who is preventing us from having it all and having it now.

Time and action

In order for something to happen, some time needs to pass. This is in direct contradiction to the fact that you are tired of waiting and wasting time. Inevitably, the time is passing and it seems that as days go by you’re further away from what you want. This is because we are all too focused on time in terms of hours, days, months, years. But that’s not what we should be focused on.

What we need to realize instead is that - it’s action, not time, that makes things happen!

Action, practice, determination and the clarity about what is it that you want, are far more important than time.

When and how

Once you get this straight, you will stop stressing about WHEN something will happen to you and focus on HOW you can make it happen. Try not to think so much about WHEN you will achieve something but rather HOW it can be done. It’s a good exercise to imagine how you will feel once you’ve got what you wanted. This feeling of fulfillment, joy, excitement and happiness will keep you motivated.

Equip yourself and go!

There’s a few more things that can help you along the way. For example, instead of trying to figure out whether you are being too patient or too impatient, think about the skills you need to make something become true. Do you have the right knowledge, qualifications, maturity or any other factor?

Think about how much you really want something and think about why you want something so bad. The answers to these are far more relevant than time and patience.

You don’t need to wait to have something, you just need to take action that will bring you closer to what you want.

For example, you want to start writing your own blog which you will eventually turn into a business, but everyone keeps telling you it will take a lot of time until you actually start making money. But you don’t want to wait for a few years for things to pick up, you need the extra income asap.

How about writing for others and getting paid for that and at the same time working on your own blog and your own business ideas? Earning money from other sources will make you feel closer to your goal without thinking so much about time and patience you will need to realize your dream.

Or maybe you want to buy a car, a house or travel around the world for a year? Try turning some old hobby into a source of extra income that can help you get some additional cash you can put on the side. If you don’t have a hobby, do a course in accounting or some art that you always wanted and then start earning more money.

Just focus on the small steps, small actions, that can get you closer to your final destination. It takes a whole year for an orange to ripen, but no one thinks about it when the juices start flowing.

The same goes for whatever you want to achieve in life, the “CAN DO” attitude and your willingness to stay on the right path is what matters, not the time you invested. Because when those juices start flowing, you’ll forget about everything else!