***Patience, Perseverance and Momentum

Do you have those days where you feel frustrated and stuck? Are there times when you doubt yourself and are impatient about your progress in your initiatives and toward your goals? At times like this you can take a huge step toward regaining your momentum by slowing down and breathing. That’s right, you can pause to help you move forward…

Breathe and think about your project. Recount your successes to date and revel in them. Give them as much time and attention as you have given to your frustrations…. then give them more and continue to breathe. Use your self-talk skills to calm yourself and refocus. Remind yourself of the benefit of taking time to refocus and re-energize yourself.

In this space that you have created you will be more able to review your progress, to more accurately access where you are and what you need to do to get to where you want to be. By developing your ability to be patient you will be able to diminish your doubts and rebuild your confidence.

The approach of the tortoise… determined, slow and steady.. is a powerful capability for you to develop. With that way of thinking and doing you may realize that your previous feelings had little foundation and that you are much more able to keep on going, to persevere than you thought just moments before.

The mindset of patience and perseverance fosters optimism, determination and momentum. The realization that progress in initiatives does not follow a straight line, that there will be twists and turns, surprises, and changes of speed, is vital for you to embrace as a reality. Remember every wave that’s ever existed, and will ever exist, has both a top, an up, a crest and a bottom, a down, a trough. And so it is with life, and with our initiatives.

There will fast times and slow times, times of great advancement and times of little progress. When you learn to embrace this rhythm of nature and of the universe as the way it is, you will be on the road to helping yourself feel better when you initially feel frustrated, overwhelmed, or discouraged in any initiative. It will remind you that you can use the skills of pausing, breathing, stepping back, rethinking and then re-energizing yourself in difficult moments. It will remind you that what you are experiencing comes with the territory of living, and that with patience and perseverance you will be able to regain your momentum and continue to move forward and upward in your projects, initiatives, and life.