Patience is the highest form of faith

Most blogs are abandoned because individuals and companies fail to see results one, three or even six months into the efforts.

They didn’t get the traffic or conversations they were expecting, and so, the blogs were left to lie fallow. Like trees falling in the digital forest that nobody hears. Monuments to a rare burst of enthusiasm. Public remnants of their ambitions unfulfilled.

It’s like that old blues song:

The thrill is gone baby, all I can do is wish you well, there’s a new world, and I’m free from your spell.

Beck’s legendary research on spiral dynamics of leadership found that entrepreneurs had several traits in common, chiefly among them were the impulse to start something new and the patience to be satisfied with small victories along the way.

This is a helpful reminder when our patience is hanging at the other end of a very thin thread. We have to ground ourselves in the fertile soil of faith, otherwise we won’t stay the course.

The question is not, what are we waiting for? The question is, what are we not waiting for?

Here is a case study from my own work. Years ago, I launched a weekly blog for our yoga community. It was an exhilarating project, as it combined two of my most cherished activities, writing and yoga.

But after about eight months of consistent posting, the studio manager grew disappointed with the results. Perhaps it isn’t worth the effort, she said. Maybe we should abandon the blog and find something else.

As luck would have it, a few weeks later, our site won an award for one of the top yoga blogs on the web. And a few months after that, an editor from a major publisher reached out. She was a regular subscriber to our blog, told me she loved the articles, and asked if we would be interested in collating my weekly columns into a book.

A year later, the book came out and is now the centerpiece of our yoga community’s marketing efforts.

Of course, this isn’t about blogs. This is about patience.

Does your capacity for delayed gratification make it possible for you to aspire to dreams that others would disregard within three months?