The Forgotten Virtue

I’ve put it off too long.

I should have done this a while ago, but I just never got around to it.

So here it goes.

I failed.

But not in the traditional sense. Not in the catastrophic, life-threatening way that can actually hurt other people.

But instead, I failed myself.

Which in actuality is a lot more painful than anyone else can ever realize. No one can experience your pain. Yes maybe they can empathize with you and try to understand what you are experiencing. They may even have had a similar enough of an experience to almost feel your pain.

Almost…

But in the end, they can never truly empathize with the feeling of letting Yourself down. Only you can relate to how it feels to deal with the good and bad of ourselves on a 24/7 basis.

No one else.

And if you set personal goals and expectations that you want to achieve, it becomes increasingly more painful to see those slip past you while the rest of the world moves along at a pace that never seems to slow down and let us catch our breath — hoping for a break in the waves.

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So what choice does that leave us with?

Well for me, the biggest issue wasn’t that I had unrealistic expectations.

In fact, considering my life circumstances, they were fairly achievable.

The problem lied within my daily mindset that stayed with me on a regular basis. And as I look back on it now, I see one defining quality that I lacked which could have served me well.

Patience

I always knew I was an impatient person, but never really thought of it as a negative quality. In my mind, being impatient just meant that I didn’t like sitting in traffic, or waiting an extra day for a package to arrive.

Big deal! Who cares? Nobody likes dealing with that stuff, so why should it cause me any harm?

It wasn’t until just recently that I actually discovered the importance of patience. It wasn’t until I looked at the successful people around me who had achieved what I desired, that I realized the quality they all possessed.

Not a single one was an overnight or even an overmonth success. They dug in for the long haul and got better every single day. Not a week passed by that they weren’t looking to learn something new or improve in an area they once struggled.

These actions can be so subtle that no one would ever notice. They can be as simple as taking an extra 20 minutes to review your notes, or eating fruit instead of a bag of chips.

From an outside perspective, these mundane moments of life are hardly noteworthy. If anything, they simply become the way we view that person and how we perceive them on a regular basis. To the untrained eye, nothing spectacular is ever happening.

Where the magic is really happening, few of us will ever see.

And that’s because it happens internally, within the conscious mind of that one specific person. They see that extra lap as something bigger. They know that it adds up and compiles on top the last “extra” moment. But unless you are watching very carefully, you would never see that from the outside.

And much like my personal anguish towards my failure that I experienced, no one will ever know what it feels like to be ME.

No matter how hard they try. At the end of the day, it’s my thoughts and my actions that affect the path my life takes.

So I have a choice. We all have a choice.

Will I spend today dwelling on the past or day dreaming about the future — or will I actually man the fuck up and make the most of this incredibly boring and mundane moment because I realize that it will actually affect the rest of my life? Will I do that “extra” thing? Will I wait a little longer for results? Will I see the importance the next boring moment, and the next and the next?

This is the choice we have to make. And the hardest part? We have to make this choice EVERY SINGLE DAY. For the rest of our lives.

But such is life.

Things aren’t going to change.

Unless we actually do something about it.

-DT

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Want to change, but not sure where to start?

As you can see, I’m working through a lot of stuff right now, but already have some useful insights into how to improve your daily habits and remove bad practices. In my next post I will share some super simple strategies you can implement in your lives.

I hope you enjoyed my first post.

Looking forward to sharing more in the future.