Patience and Commitment

I want to talk about patience, which is obviously not really my favourite topic, because patience is something I don't necessarily have much of. I'm not a patient person. If you had to write all of the things you do have versus all the things you don't have as personality traits, patience wouldn’t make it on either of those lists; it would be on the list of “definitely never ever has, never ever will", as I will never have any patience. But, patience is actually really important. When I say patience, I mean in terms of not seeing a result straight away but knowing you're working towards your goal. Patience is something that is a skill, and I don't have those qualities. That's not my strength. Patience is not my thing. Waiting it out is not my area of skillset, but I do recognise its importance. Now, because it's not my area of expertise, I don't even pretend like I'm patient. I don't even pretend like I have the remotest air of patience. I think if a job needs doing or something's up, I'm just going to go for it and it has to be done. I find what can I do now to get that result? I'm only ever interested in getting the result.

It's interesting when you talk about being committed, and I've talked about being committed and taking action a lot recently to fire some people up. It's interesting because it's a contradiction a little bit because when you want something, you'll do what you can. You'll do things to the best of your ability. When you are committed to something and you're committed to actually making it happen; when I say committed, I mean you literally can’t live your life without the result, so you'll do anything. There's a difference, in my opinion. Now, other people move away from this, and you can disagree with me, or you can have a different variation on the scale of how much you're committed to things, but my opinion is if you truly want something, you will do anything, and I say anything, to get it. You'll even compromise your morals. I've talked about this before. In a relationship, people compromise their standards, their morals, their everything in the pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of love. Whereas people who only do what they're comfortable with, and only to a certain level, for the things they want, choose to then up that scale for things they desire or wish they had. People will do things differently depending on how much they truly want a desired outcome. This is why I always ask these questions: How much do you truly want the goal? How much do you truly want that feeling? How much do you truly want those things? Are you scared of the repercussions? This is why I said that I recognise how important patience is, even though it's something I'm not very good at. Patience is long-term. There's a lot to be said for long-term strategy, long-term storytelling in terms of your own mindset, and long-term conditioning of your mindset. I talk about mindset, I talk about state, I talk about storytelling (the story you tell yourself), and I talk about strategies; the goal, the plan that we set that you work towards on how to achieve things. Patience boils down to three things: State, Story, and Strategy. Life's a long game. Life's a marathon, not a sprint. You have to sometimes realise things don't just happen overnight. Yes, you can have lots of small wins. Yes, you can get big wins very quickly, and sometimes you can have big breakthroughs very, very instantaneously, but you have to be patient and trust in the process that, although you're taking steps forward and you may not be there yet, you are taking steps forward. It's recognising that you are moving forward, at whatever pace you're moving forward. If you're not moving forward fast enough, sometimes you can do more. Sometimes you have to only do what you're able to do and able to control to make those things happen.

Now, the reason I don't talk about patience too much is because I think people can use patience as an excuse. Lots of people, when I talk about the Get Over It course, say: I'll get over it. Time heals everything.  People say time heals everything all of the time. Time is the only thing you can never get back. You can never get your time back. Once your time is gone, you can never get your time back. How much time do you want to spend wasting your life feeling awful? Time maybe does heal all. Maybe time can move you past a relationship breakup or somebody cheating on you and you work on it and the pain going away. Or, maybe you could deal with it yourself? Obviously, you know my approach. My approach is tackle things straightaway and head on. But things sometimes are a longer-term process. Rome was not built in a day. This is why you have to use patience to get you there. This is celebrating the successes you have had and also knowing the fact that this is not something you're committing to lightly. When you do commit to changing your future, it can be hard. For example, if you're 35 and you’re not happy, you’ve got 35 years of conditioning to change. Lots of people say that they wish they could go back to the person they were before everything happened, but they actually don't want to go back. They want to forward. They weren't actually happy with that person who went into that relationship three years ago, because if they were happy with that person, with that identity, with who they were, they'd have never attracted or been attracted to that narcissistic knobhead in the first place. So, when people tell me they want to go back, they don't want to go back. What they actually want is to redesign themselves as a new person in the aim of getting the feelings that they thought they felt like in the first place. That is the key point. People are not chasing a place in time. People are chasing the feeling that they once had. The feeling they are now missing. This is the same when people: Go through relationship breakups Go through a great moment at work Have babies Go to their children’s assemblies They’re chasing the feeling it gave them as a person, and that's the very big difference. Changing what you feel like and chasing a feeling is very different because you can get significance, you can get certainty, you can get love, you can get connection through so many different mediums. You don’t need to go back to dating assholes because you felt that maybe they made you feel loved. It’s vital to find out what you're actually trying to achieve, by finding the feelings that you're trying to recreate, because you're trying to create moments. I love talking about moments. I talk about moments lots with my private clients, about what's the difference between a meal out and a birthday meal out? Nine times out of ten, you'll always remember somebody's birthday, or a Hen do, or a Christmas experience because they're moments. They're given significance by the fact that it's Christmas, it's Easter, it's someone's birthday or you’re planning for a wedding. But, when you just go out for a meal, you don’t create the same significance. This is why people have started having date night, as they give it significance, so they try and remember.

The problem is that lots of people then don't follow on with the significance by giving that event the time and deliberation in their own heads that it deserves. So how do you go around creating moments for yourself, because ultimately what you're trying to do with every single action and every single behaviour is to recreate moments, because moments make you feel special, because they're moments that you can anchor and respond to. When you anchor a moment or a feeling, you can always take yourself back there. Lots of people can have negative anchors, when you remember when that partner of yours told you that you'd never progress in your career, that you're never going be good enough, you'll never find anybody better than them, and they'll be the only person who ever loves you. Lots of people can recall that moment. Those four statements that were made to them, they can recall that moment and anchor that very clearly in their head. The song comes on the radio and jumps that memory of that time that happened bad. That was the song that was playing in the hospital when something bad happened. When I ask people to remember good things, lots of people are stumped and like I haven't got as many memories to call upon to remember what happy feels like. You'd be surprised how much this affects us. Try this yourself right now or later on today: Tell me about a time when you felt truly happy, when you felt truly loved and fulfilled. I want you to think about what had to happen for you to feel that way, because it's not about the story you end up telling me. It's about the conditions that were in place before you felt those feelings. Try to recall your state of mind. To elaborate a little bit more, let me give you an example. "Tell me Ben about a time you felt secure." The last time I felt secure was when someone put their arms around me in a particular way. Then, I think, right. What had to happen? Physical touch. Who was the person who put their arms around you? What were the circumstances they put their arms around you? Does it always work? Does it always make you feel secure when someone puts their arms around you? Is it the actual arms that go around you, so physical touch? Is it the person who did it that made you have the feelings? It could've been anyone. Just, someone hugs you, you feel secure, you feel safe. Or, is it that particular person who made you feel safe? Then we dig further and we dig further and we dig further, until we find what that actual key things is that gives you that feeling: that gives you that feeling of security, gives you that feeling of safety, gives you that feeling of love, gives you that feeling of comfort, gives you that feeling of joy. This all takes patience. When you say you don't know what you want for tea and somebody offers you a pizza and you say no, so they offer you a KFC, and you say no, so they put down a burger from McDonald's in front of you and you don't want this either, the first thing you say is that you want chicken nuggets and chips, because you did know all along what you wanted. The difference is they were asking you the wrong question or you were asking your brain the wrong question. Often, when you put things right in front of you that you don't want, you certainly fucking know you don't want it. We make things harder for ourselves because we do not ask the question: “What do we actually want?” When you're all about getting through the day rather than building a happy future for yourself, you're fighting on fucking defence. As I say, patience is important. Rome wasn't built in a day. If you set a big vision, you can't expect it, and you shouldn't expect it, to happen overnight. It takes hard work. It takes development. It takes creativity. It takes commitment. It takes a lot of factors, and that takes time. You have a big vision, then you have lots of little goals. There is lots of elements that go into creating the life that you want to live, and one of those fucking things is patience. Which is one of the things I say I don't have too much of, but I recognise its importance and it comes up for me quite a lot, in terms of how I depict information. This is where I'm trying to develop myself. I know all of the things that I want to achieve in business and in my life and with Isabelle. I can't teach her to be the perfect human being. You can't teach anyone to be a perfect human being are there is probably no such thing as a perfect human being (although Isabelle is the closest thing to perfect I've ever seen). My point is that I want to be the perfect father for her; I want to give her the best role model, I want to give her the best examples, I want to give her the best of everything. That takes time and patience to develop her.

I can't just click my fingers when she's now nearly three and give her all those qualities. That takes time to learn and develop and grow. Could I do more with her? Probably. Could I do less with her? Probably. Could I do more efficient things? Probably. But I can only do what I can do, and it takes patience. It’s like growing a plant; you’ve got to nurture them through. It takes time. It's important to see the end result. We're trying to get them to a place where they can deal with adult life on their own without us consistently every day looking after them. From when she was a baby, she needs a lot less attention in terms of she can get herself dressed, she can eat her own food. She's growing. I, obviously, and her mom, are helping her to learn skills that will get her through her life to be successful and live independently. So, patience is important. That's a strange analogy to finish on, but it’s a rounded one, so there you go.