Last Updated on July 9, 2025
How to be patient when you’re feeling impatient
What if to get the success you want, it takes 10-40 times more patience, persistence, and consistency with the fundamentals than you’d prefer to do
Spoiler alert!
It probably does.
But this is good news actually, because it can help us realize the real goal here:
Enjoying the process.
Get fit slowly
The average fitness beginner who wants to “get in shape” can only imagine doing a new diet or exercise plan for about 4-12 weeks.
This is why most diets and exercise plans say they get results that quickly.
The reality is a bit different, however.
I’ve seen discussions from deeply honest, science-based body transformation coaches.
Most say something like this:
“Realistically, for most beginners, your goal physique is 3-5 years away.”
Not weeks, years.
That’s somewhere between 13 and 65 times longer than most people can conceive of doing anything consistently.
Especially something that seems really difficult.
And guess what happens once you achieve your goal physique?
You get to keep doing those same things…at least if you want to keep getting those same results.
But people who achieve their goal physiques and maintain them have a secret:
They enjoy it.
They love working out.
They love tweaking their macronutrients.
They love the process itself.
It’s like a really fun game!
Get rich slowly
The same thing applies to many areas of life.
Want to create a business that generates “passive income,” but you’re a business beginner?
It’s absolutely possible.
In 3 months, probably not.
But in 5 years of consistent work on the fundamentals like…
- understanding your target market,
- increasing the value of your offer,
- improving your messaging,
- growing your visibility,
- creating a persuasive sales process,
- and so on…
Absolutely.
Since it may take a while, it helps if you love geeking out on your business.
Maybe you really enjoy a good spreadsheet.
Or love running experiments to increase conversion rates or Return On Ad Spend.
If it feels too much like “work,” you might not stick with it long enough.
But if you make the process enjoyable, even when it’s a challenge, then your success is inevitable.
Get energized slowly
Tired all the time?
Maybe you just need a long weekend, or a two-week vacation.
But if you’re truly burned out, recovery is often a slow process.
Like getting fit or getting rich, it’s totally worth it.
And there are some fundamentals here too.
Learn to motivate yourself through love and joy and pleasure, not anger and fear and pain.
Do more things that light up your soul, and less things that suck the life out of you.
This is a massive paradigm shift for most of us.
We’ve been programmed almost since birth to do things from a stress state.
But it absolutely is possible to live more and more in a flow state instead.
People in my Joy of Doing weekly coaching group are experiencing more and more of this.
It takes a few months, or sometimes a year or two, before we really start to see the changes.
But they grow more and more within us, getting stronger and stronger.
And then life is never the same again.
Whatever your goal is, it makes sense to learn to enjoy the process, the ups and the downs.
When we aren’t focused only on getting the result, ironically, we are more likely to persist long enough to actually get it.
Take care,
~Duff
(they/them)
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