Patience, “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, problems, or suffering without being annoyed or anxious”.
After spending 4 years not knowing what it was I wanted to do career-wise, my decision to learn and start my own online business was a huge revelation. It just so happened that when finally arriving at my choice, my job became less than desirable. I looked forward to having my new business create the income I needed so I could leave the job I now loathed, the sooner the better.
I’m the kind of person who, when I know what I want, I want it now! Wasting time, setbacks and procrastination are not an option, especially when it comes to progressing forward. Combine this with the fact I was extremely keen to leave my job, I’d have to say that my capacity to accept or tolerate delay with my online marketing progress was very low and I did allow myself to become annoyed and anxious.
However, life has taught me that many things cannot be rushed, and I’ve learned this is especially the case regarding my journey to learn, start and build my online marketing business.
How Long Does It Take To Build Your Online Business?
As with anything in life that is truly worth it, there will be setbacks. A lot of what you learn from online marketing comes about through experience. You need to find out what works and what doesn’t through trial and error, and this takes time.
There will be times when it seems as though you are putting in heaps of hours and all the effort you possibly can but you’re not getting the results you expect or desire.
Growing your business does not happen overnight, but it will happen.
The trick is to be persistent at applying the correct consistent action.
To make a success of your online marketing business, patience is a must! You need to maintain motivation, self-discipline, drive, and commitment even when it seems as though you are not achieving the results you desire. Online marketing is not an “instant gratification” style of business. However, they say delayed gratification leads to greater happiness.
So how do we employ patience as we build our online marketing business? Here are 9, what I hope are, helpful tips to make patience your greatest virtue.
- Accept what is
- Practice Gratitude
- Mindfulness – living in the present moment
- Practice waiting
- Embrace time you are given
- Let go
- Don’t compare yourself to others
- Know that you will achieve your desires
- Force yourself To Slow Down
1. Accept What Is
- You’re in the middle of creating your landing page for your new ad campaign and suddenly, for no apparent reason, the internet goes down.
- You get stuck progressing with your online marketing education.
- You experience a glitch with a program you are using.
- You forget to hit save.
Setbacks will inevitably occur. That’s life. I’ve experienced setbacks that have held me back for almost a week. It’s up to us how we feel about these setbacks. To be impatient and feel negative in any way about them is simply self-torture. Yep, I did torture myself with the first few setbacks I experienced learning online marketing but I have learned to let go of my negative feelings and understand that things happen in good time for all of us. Delays can provide an important learning opportunity.
2. Practice Gratitude
Being thankful for what we have decreases stress, improves optimism and make us happy. The fact that we even have the opportunity and ability to work towards our dream is something to be grateful for in itself, not to mention all the wonderful things our lives provide us with such as;
- experiences with family and friends
- our creature comforts
- the ability to spend time enjoying the activities we love.
When we are able to feel thankful for what we do have in our lives, feelings of impatience seem irrelevant.
3. Become Mindful – Live in the Present Moment
You’re at the start of your online marketing journey so to fund your advertising budget you are working part-time. A work colleague has rung in sick so your employer strongly suggests you stay back to cover your colleagues shift. Grrrrrr. The anxiety levels rise. You simply want to get home so you can work on your business because the sooner you can make a success of your online business the sooner you can leave this job that you have absolutely no passion for what-so-ever.
OR
You’re feeling as though you are not accomplishing anything with your online business so you end up feeling negative because you just wanna earn enough income to be able to leave your current job
Both scenarios have you trying to remove yourself from the present moment to the future.
(Side note: yep, I’ve been in very similar scenarios)
Anxiety is created from being here when we want to be there. We need to remember that “here and now” is all there ever truly is. Feeling any negative feeling will simply create more reason to feel the same negative feeling in the future.
During these experiences, it’s good to pause and recognize we are trying to be there when we are here. Next, allow yourself to surrender by firstly taking some deep breaths to calm the mind and body.
As you take your deep breaths become completely present by allowing your jaw, shoulders, and belly to relax. Then, it’s time to focus on doing whatever it takes to feel good in the moment. Think of a positive outlook on the situation you find yourself in, because, there is always a positive thought that can replace the negative.
With regards to both scenarios, the positive thought would have to be to feel thankful for having a job that provides the advertising funding needed to get an online business up and running – not to mention pays the bills.
4. Practice Waiting
Studies have shown that waiting for things actually provides more happiness in the long run.
I don’t know about you, but back in my day, I was taught to save money to buy things I really wanted. I’ll always remember saving for weeks and weeks to purchase my first, (what I thought were), coolest pair of sneakers ever. I think I was about 13 years of age when I fell in love with LA Gear sneakers. They were an ankle boot sneaker and the ones I purchased had 3 different coloured shoelaces.
I can’t remember exactly how long it took me to buy my LA Gear’s but I do know they were worth around $100-$150 AUD at the time, so it must have taken at least 3 months which, being a teenager, would have seemed like a lifetime. Boy, was I happy when I finally had them on my feet. I loved those sneakers so much. I even washed them by hand every week, including the laces.
Instant gratification may seem like the best option as far as providing happiness goes, but I’d have to agree that having to work for and wait for things does provide longer-term happiness.
If you know you are an instant gratitude type person, why not make yourself hang out for things. Put some cash aside for a few weeks to make a special purchase rather than whack it straight on the credit card. Set up a garden bed so you can put in the required effort needed to produce your own fresh produce. Wash your own car and maybe even polish and wax it yourself. By doing things like this we not only learn to become more patient but we also gain a deeper sense of appreciation for what we have achieved or purchased.
5. Force Yourself To Slow Down.
Impatience due to unexpected delays can result in feeling the need to rush because you know you are now behind on your own schedule for the day. Tension rises and the mind races as you then go about attempting to achieve everything that is on your schedule. This is one of the most important times to slow yourself down. Why?
- Bad decisions, be them personal or business, can be made in this state of mind
- There’s the potential to hurt yourself (and others – eg driving over the speed limit)
- Rushing creates more need to rush.
You can actually create time by slowing down because by slowing down you show the Universe/God you have all the time in the world – so much of it that you can afford to give it away by slowing down. One of the laws of creation is that when you give something away, you get it back tenfold.
I’ve tested the theory myself.
On Saturday I like to get the clothes washing, housework and my weights workout done. I often work on Saturday too. Every second Saturday I travel 90 minutes to and from my 30-minute horse riding lesson. To get there on time I need to have packed my riding gear, changed into my riding clothes and eaten lunch by 13:30 pm so I can leave straight after.
There have been more than a few Saturday’s where I have been running late. On these occasions, I deliberately chose to sit down somewhere and enjoy my lunch rather than shove it down my face as quick as possible. And you know what the result is? I leave 10 minutes later, but I seem to catch mostly green lights on the way to my lesson resulting in me actually arriving early. I now know that by slowing down I create time.
Next time you are delayed in some way, consider slowing down rather than rushing off to your next commitment.
6. Embrace Unexpected Delays.
I am a strong believer in the fact that everything happens for our greater good, even if it does not seem like it at the start. I’ll even go as far as saying I know everything happens for my greater good. So when we are faced with situations where we are forced to slow down and wait, then I say “let’s suck it up and enjoy it”.
Perhaps there’s some other task to go on with or, better yet, take the opportunity to take time out for yourself. Go for a walk, connect with a loved one, practice being mindful, do something that you know makes you feel good. No point becoming annoyed at what can not be changed, so why not just go with it. Perhaps the whole reason you’ve been made to wait is to teach you to be more accepting and therefore happier.
7. Let Go / Surrender
O.K. I know, you’ve probably heard this one a thousand times, but you’ve gotta be wondering why huh? I’ll tell you why – because it works. Letting go of the expectations we place on ourselves is essential to achieving the success we desire. We become impatient with our online business success because we place an expectation on ourselves to achieve X by a certain amount of time. Or maybe we need to let go of “wanting” it so bad. As far as the Law of Attraction (Creation) goes, the more we “want” something the more “wanting” we create in our lives. When we feel we “want” something so badly, the Universe/God thinks we enjoy “wanting” so provides us with the need to “want” some more.
Know that success will happen when you “know” it will happen.
If you become stressed at a scenario that forces you to wait or become delayed then you will simply create more scenarios in your life that create the same type of stress. Just as “wanting” creates more “wanting”, feeling “stressed” has the Universe / God assume we enjoy feeling “stressed” so the Universe / God provides us with more reasons to feel stressed (this is what the law of attraction is all about – mind you, I prefer to call it the law of creation).
We need to just let go and surrender to things that are out of our control. I like to take a deep breath in and as I breathe out I say the words “let go” in my mind. After I do this a few times I feel my shoulders drop and then my entire body is able to relax.
Feel free to try this one yourselves.
8. Don’t Compare Yourself To Others
Sure, there may be people out there who have made a success of their online business sooner, but you can not compare your rate of success with another person’s rate of success. It’s like comparing a cucumber with a wooden chair (sorry, it’s the most opposing two things I could think of at the time).
Everyone is 100% individual.
We were all brought up and conditioned 100% differently according to what we were subjected to by family, friends and other external influences. Some of us have been brought up with a strong root system that supports and encourage the ability to succeed and some of us have not. Those who haven’t will take longer to succeed as there is mental work to be done – and it can be done. We can all learn the mindset that is required to achieve success.
We all have our own individual circumstances. These individual circumstances will affect how much time and money we can invest in our business. Some people have more time and/or money and there are those that have less time and/or money.
And then there’s our perception. How I perceive what I am being taught about online marketing may be completely different to someone else’s perception meaning one of us may be applying incorrect consistent action until we learn otherwise – this has been a definite time delayer for me and that’s fine. I get there eventually and I am learning to enjoy the journey even more.
There will always be people who achieve more success than you or achieve it quicker. So what! All time spent driving yourself closer and closer to your own success is time well spent. As long as you do get there, that’s all that really matters.
9. Know That You Will Achieve Your Success!
Be positive. Have no doubt you will be successful. Don’t just believe it, know it!!
With regards to your online business, success will come to those who take the correct consistent action.
Here’s a little test for you.
Say this statement out loud:
“I know I will achieve my success”
How does it feel to say it? If you feel a little anxious or uncomfortable in any way what-so-ever then you may have some mental work to do. You’ve got to truly know that you will create your success. It’s this true sense of knowing that enables us to enjoy the process and it’s enjoying the process that creates success.
Final Words:
I’m sure you know the saying about enjoying the journey rather than focusing on the destination. Without developing patience with your online marketing business it’s going to be pretty tough to enjoy the journey. It’s a fact that the most common reason people give up on their online marketing business is due to the fact they become impatient so do not stick it out for the amount of time they need to create success. If you do not have the patience to deal with delays, setbacks, and a lack of instant gratification before starting your online business, you will have no choice but to gain patience otherwise you are at a very high risk of becoming another online business statistic – the one that states you as failing “due to impatience”.