The Real Truth About Waiting

It’s time to stop waiting.
Time to maybe ask ourselves why we’re waiting.
And maybe get precise on what it is that we are waiting on.

Time to ask the question of how we want to live our lives.
To seek what it is that we desire to live into.
To wonder why we aren’t doing so, why we’re waiting.

I know some of what I was waiting on ten years ago.
I was waiting until my paintings got better.
I was waiting to get accepted into a prestigious gallery or win an award in a major art competition.
Waiting to be discovered by those in the know.
Waiting until I felt good enough.
Waiting until the stars had aligned, and good outcomes were guaranteed.
Waiting.

Do you know where all that waiting got me?
Twenty years older and twenty years down the road with not much to show for in terms of my dreams.
It kept me discouraged and feeling less than.
It made my dreams of the life I desired feel further and further away.
So many years wasted in waiting and then one day I decided…
I wasn’t going to wait anymore (you can hear a bit of my personal story just recorded at the podcast link below).

The thing to know about not waiting is this.
It doesn’t require that we begin doing everything at once, trying to make up for lost years.
We just have to stop waiting.
I looked up the opposite of waiting.
Here’s what I found: advancing, beginning, doing, forging, forwarding, going, moving, carrying on, going ahead, taking off.
Words that denote action, movement, doing something.
Notice it doesn’t involve what the size of the action is.
It merely shows that waiting has been replaced with doing.

Author of On Being Human, Jen Pasitloff (more about her in my next writing) summed it up so beautifully when she said this:

I’m tired, folks.
I can’t wait anymore.
Because ultimately, I woke up & finally asked WHAT AM I WAITING FOR? and it was nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, that wasn’t already inside of me.

We already have everything we need. It’s time to stop waiting.

Special Note: I was honored to do a fantastic podcast with someone who’s work I greatly admire. Her name is Mary Rogers, and she is the smooth voice and great questions behind the Experience 50 podcast. I think you will enjoy it (and many more of her other audios–be sure and subscribe to her podcasts!) You can listen to it by clicking here!