I’ve never considered myself to be an innately patient person. In my childhood and youth, I disliked waiting, and I rarely walked the extra mile without having at least two good reasons for doing so. Even today, I occasionally experience a certain level of discomfort creeping up on me whenever I find myself compelled to take an approach that feels less time efficient than I would want it to be. Then again, compared to a lot of people I’ve met, I’ve never seen much of a point in categorizing myself as exceptionally short-tempered, restless, or fickle. Taking a detour doesn’t make me lose my temper or throw me off balance. In fact, I’ve come to realize that, in the majority of situations when I felt impatient, I was actually annoyed because I didn’t like the idea of approaching a dead end.

It took me a long time to fully understand how important it is to become abundantly clear about what side I want to be on when it comes to patience. The thing is, when you have a decent number of conversations with all kinds of people about this topic, you’re going to be presented with a lot of different viewpoints on the matter. So, you need to figure out what’s relevant to you. It’s not enough to merely listen to the perspectives of others. You have to assess the lives of these people and figure out if the conclusions they’ve drawn have fostered their ability to achieve the kind of success that they’re looking for. And, you need to determine if their definition of successful living is actually significant and meaningful to you.

You might have been told that how other people define success shouldn’t be of your concern. Still, since we’re social beings by nature, all of us are constantly affected by beliefs and biases that we encounter in our environment. For much of our life, we are surrounded by individuals who would like us to buy into their world view and interpretation of reality. It’s natural for us to want others to be on the same page with us. And, it’s normal to feel good about being on the same page with others. Hence, many of us have experienced situations when they felt an ill-founded obligation to agree with somebody else’s definition of success. When it comes to other people’s opinions, it’s vitally important to be critical and open-minded at the same time. So, let’s look into this a little more closely.

Quite a number of years ago, a teacher of mine took a trip from the United States to the Netherlands, following an invitation to give a keynote speech at a conference. When the event was over, she wasn’t shy about taking any opportunity to talk about how well her speech had been received by the audience. She enjoyed pointing out that her presentation had been a stunning, standing-ovations-type of success. And yet, for whatever reason, something about that narrative didn’t feel right to me. So, I asked a friend of mine, who had been in the audience during the event, to offer me her perspective on what had happened. My friend ensured me that every word of the story was completely true. The whole audience had reacted very positively to the lecture. There was just one problem. Aside from herself, only twelve other conference participants had taken the time to attend the speech.

I happen to know a considerable number of people who are eager to be on the same page with that keynote speaker, because of the way she talks about her life and herself. Given the right crowd, she can be very persuasive. The thing is, that crowd isn’t always that large. She’s managed to make a decent living using her skills, and she’s successfully taught people from all over the world. However, she’s very reliant on seminar attendees who have a vested interest in believing that the image that she projects of herself is an accurate depiction of reality. So, as she’s pointed out several times, there are a lot more people out there who would benefit greatly from her method, yet would need to be addressed in a different way and therefore are beyond her reach.

Ultimately, she depends on being appealing to workshop participants who love to hear her speak about how the world could be changed if only people would see reality more like she does. She needs followers who don’t get too worried when they realize that, despite the undeniable ingenuity of her method, her teachings have never gained the momentum needed to have as broad an impact as they could. She relies on attracting an audience that doesn’t question every word she says and isn’t all too concerned about the fact that, over the years, nobody actually managed to make a living to speak of by carrying her torch and following her advice, despite the fact that she’s trained a sizable number of facilitators. In short, she mostly surrounds herself with people who are distinctly willing to see something in her that positions her as an authoritative source of information and who support each other in keeping that image up.

As I’ve maintained the role of head organizer for her trainings over the course of five years, I could make the claim that I’m the exception to what I just said. The part I had in growing her participant numbers while I was in charge was largely based on keeping her out of the picture of logistics and client interaction as much as I could, meaning that I did pretty much everything but follow her advice. In fact, it was quite obvious that, during the time when I was organizing, the audience temporarily broadened. Still, this process didn’t get beyond the early stages.

Quite understandably, it felt extremely important to our teacher that her definition of success was accepted as the predominant standard, and that the images she painted were being upheld. So, this did not create an environment in which people felt particularly comfortable dealing with the friction caused by pointing anybody’s attention to the fallacies and weak spots of the organization at large. After I had resigned, she pointed out that she’s completely fine with going back to teaching smaller groups and that she had indeed never felt a personal need for building effective organizational structures aimed to support the facilitators she had trained.

At the end of the day, I’m not trying to impose my definition of success onto anyone else. I’m not saying that the keynote speech she gave in the Netherlands needs to be considered a failure and I don’t believe that attendee numbers are the only important factor. I’m not saying she can’t do things her way and that she should feel obliged to get out of her comfort zone in order to provide structures that actually allow for the students of her method to make a living as facilitators and help more people get access to her method. Still, I see things differently than she does. And, based on a lot of conversations that the two of us had, I’m very aware that my way of thinking, in more than one regard, isn’t compatible with hers. So, what I’m saying is that, looked at from my perspective and based on my value system, the number of people attending the speech didn’t quite back the impression given by the narrative that I heard repeatedly told afterwards.

Boiled down to simple terms, being successful means getting an outcome we want by following an approach that is aligned with our goals and values. With such a general definition, success can mean a lot of different things to a lot of people. If a person happens to experience a sense of accomplishment when they manage to get through their day without wetting their pants, I’m not saying that they cannot take pride in this achievement. I don’t feel much of a need to be the judge of that. Similarly, if somebody’s idea of success is all about reaching the point of quitting their job, or selling their business, and never having to work another day in their life, I’m not expecting them to be bothered by the fact that I consider this to be an unappealing concept. Just because I enjoy being productive and having a positive impact by doing what I love doesn’t mean that this has to be everybody’s cup of tea. So, please be aware that, when I refer to exceptionally successful people several times over the next paragraphs, what I write about is founded on my own definition of success, not on some kind of universal standard.

The way I’ve come to see it, the vast majority of outstandingly successful people, meaning individuals who make extraordinary as well as meaningful differences for themselves and others without condoning bad compromises in the process, wouldn’t label themselves as impatient. On the other hand, a remarkable number of individuals who don’t fall into that category wouldn’t hesitate to do so. To me, this is certainly worth taking note of. Still, there are several more insights that can be gained in this context.

Many people who like to label themselves as inherently impatient will tell you that they usually get to grips with new topics quickly, watch their curiosity dwindle swiftly, and move on to the next field of interest rather sooner than later. In fact, many self-proclaimed impatient people feel inclined to see themselves as fast learners. However, viewed up closely, it’s quite obvious that most of them cannot easily be bothered taking the time to autodidactically acquire and truly master a skill or field of knowledge in any depth. Their understanding of learning tends to be superficial. Impatient people can be incredible time-wasters, always on the lookout for the next adrenalin rush. Consequently, they can be very dependent on educational institutions offering predefined curricula, as their distaste for routines and consistency prevents them from diligently following a self-directed approach to education that would allow for them to push the limits of any potential they might have.

Then again, self-proclaimed patient individuals won’t necessarily act in more expedient ways. Many people who characterize themselves as innately patient don’t mind taking a slow-moving, antiquated, or even counterproductive approach to learning, even if they suspect that there might be better ways. They can have a hard time making use of opportunities they encounter, as they like to tell themselves that whatever is being offered to them either doesn’t feel the way they want it to feel, or doesn’t come at the right time. Also, it can be a real challenge for patient people to grasp the idea of using rapid decision making and implementation as a means for deepening and accelerating a learning process.

So, if patience and impatience both can lead to equally dissatisfying outcomes, and taking into account that developing a split personality might not be our first and favorite choice for giving a special touch to the rest of our life, what can we conclude from that? Is there another alternative that could potentially offer some leverage? Believe it or not, now that you’ve successfully made it through my somewhat elaborate introduction, I’m going to present you with a concise, yet hopefully useful answer to this.

Some of the most impressive, as well as most successful, people I’ve ever encountered have managed to become experts in their field of interest by spending a great deal more time on self-guided learning and skill-acquisition than pretty much anyone else. In this sense, I consider them to be patient people as they have shown their willingness to delay gratification for greater rewards and more meaningful experiences in the future. Then again, at the same time, they’ve learned to navigate through life with what I like to call a controlled sense of urgency. Consequently, these people can be tremendously patient, yet, they’re also able to push themselves to make conscious decisions that allow for them to make the best use of their time.

The thing is, many of the most interesting and rewarding experiences we can make in life will only become accessible to us if we are willing to deliberately push ourselves to be highly perseverant, and, at the same time, also muster the kind of diligent focus necessary in order to get things done in a timely manner. We might hit a wall, either frequently or occasionally, but if we do, we need to pick ourselves up, reposition our halo, and move on. It doesn’t matter if we have been describing ourselves as predominantly patient or mostly impatient in our life so far. What matters is that we put as much focus as we can on doing things in non-conventional and unfamiliar ways that are suitable give us the outcomes we want, offering our nervous system a wide range of reasons to upgrade our self-image.