It is important to distinguish between the desire to succeed and impatience — the former is motivating, the latter is damaging.
Patience (or forbearance) is the ability to endure difficult circumstances. Patience may involve perseverance in the face of delay; tolerance of provocation without responding in disrespect/anger; or forbearance when under strain, especially when faced with longer-term difficulties. Patience is the level of endurance one can have before disrespect. It is also used to refer to the character trait of being steadfast. Antonyms include hastiness and impetuousness. In psychology and in cognitive neuroscience, patience is studied as a decision-making problem, involving the choice of either a small reward in the short-term, versus a more valuable reward in the long-term. Patience of human users in the online world has been the subject of much recent scientific research. The study also shows that users who are connected to the Internet at faster speeds are less patient than their counterparts connected at slower speeds, demonstrating a link between the human expectation of speed and human patience. These and other scientific studies of patience have led many social commentators to conclude that the rapid pace of technology is rewiring humans to be less and less patient. Ambition stirs up negative impressions sometimes. Having ambition means you have goals for a better future be it personally or professionally. A lack of ambition makes us stay in jobs we hate, cling to bad relationships or neglect our physical and emotional well-being. It hinders progress and causes people to sleepwalk through life with no direction and absent intention or drive to find a map. Professionally a lack of ambition has sent many companies crashing to the bottom of the ocean. Unfortunately, they just never had the ambition to learn how to swim. On the other hand, too many ambitions can also be dangerous. Impatience varies in degree from one person to the next. When you practice patience, you gain the ability to achieve a desired goal without feeling frustrated when the goal is not accomplished according to a reasonable schedule. Impatient people may feel frustrated when their goals are not accomplished according to their schedules, however unreasonable the schedules may be. Impatient behavior impacts relationships and one’s mental well-being
Consistent Dissatisfaction and Energy Waste: Being impatient increases the chance that you will be consistently dissatisfied, upset or angry because of pacing. For example, if you are trying to change something or grow in a certain way, and it doesn’t happen that way, you could harbor negative feelings. Focusing on slowness is a waste of energy that can be better focused on finding ways to enact the changes that you want.
Potential to Destroy Relationships: Impatience can help destroy relationships you have with other people, including your friends, family and romantic partners. Being impatient can cause people who are trying to help you to withdraw their interest and effort. In dealing with you, they may get offended by the notion that their efforts are not good enough, even if you do not intend to send this message. When you demand quicker action from people in your life, you must remember that their feelings are involved.
A mind needs solitude and time to process information. Running and rushing around erodes our precious thinking time. Stay behind that truck on the way to work. Spare your cognitive function for judging where you should apportion this week’s budget rather than whether you’ll make it before that bend. Imagine a machine that keeps spinning but never gets stopped for a service, upgrades or a break.
Lose Motivation to Accomplish Goals:Impatient people run the risk of feeling overwhelmed. Instead of trying to accomplish a defined set of goals according to a reasonable schedule, impatient people may feel like they must rush and complete defined tasks as quickly as possible. For example, if you are writing an essay for a school assignment, you know that you have to conduct research for that paper. If your goal is to finish the paper as quickly as possible, you may not come across the most helpful research to support your writing. As a result, you might lose the motivation to do the best job possible. Instead, think about the tasks ahead of you and set a reasonable time frame that you will stick to.
Fail to Reflect on Successes: Impatient people move from task to task without fully appreciating the work that they accomplished. Depending on the task, you may have expended considerable effort, time and money to accomplish your goal. This principle holds true regardless of whether you are working on a personal goal, such as weight loss, or a professional goal, such as reducing your caseload. It is important to reflect on how far you have come in your work to feel the positive effects of your work.
Setting Ambitions
Channeling Ambition: Whether an entrepreneur, employee or sweat induced corporate executive, we all need to properly channel our ambitions into a long-term approach to goal realization. A short term mindset piles excess pressure on ourselves making us less likely to achieve our goals. A toned body isn’t the result of a workout but many workouts over a sustained period of time. Likewise, a skill takes years to master Hard work is important but only if it can be maintained over a long period of time. Here the balance of working hard vs working smart enters the equation. Pushing too hard and being too ambitious can be detrimental. Normally, this is the result of seeking instant gratification via short-term results. Our ego needs fuel and accomplishments prove to be very palatable as an immediate self-esteem treat. A mind needs solitude and time to process information. Running and rushing around erodes our precious thinking time. Stay behind that truck on the way to work. Spare your cognitive function for judging where you should apportion this week’s budget rather than whether you’ll make it before that bend. Imagine a machine that keeps spinning but never gets stopped for a service, upgrades or a break. The machine will eventually break. I heard a phrase coined lately called ambition addiction. An ambition addict is someone who cannot stop chasing the next goal or accomplishment continuously stretching to achieve the utopian life. The only problem is superstardom isn’t destined for everyone
Healthy Ambition: Perfectionism is a term closely associated with ambition addiction. It too gets a bad rep. A perfectionist is never happy with the present moment. Everything can always be better. While closely related to success in the business field, it’s also the main reason why many don’t succeed. Wanting to create something perfect heaps pressure on yourself. This can steal the fun from the activity and makes procrastination quite desirable.
Professional Ambition: Imagine you want to be a brilliant Marketer, Graphic Designer, Web Developer, Photographer, and Writer. Achieving all these dreams simultaneously isn’t possible. Yet it’s something I wrestle with daily. I’m passionate about all of these subjects and know they are key to my future professional career. But mastery isn’t possible for me in all these areas. Instead, I take the approach that Marketing is my main field but all of these skills need to be slowly honed for a great Marketing career. A long-term perspective keeps me on the right path absent excess stress and pressure.
Self-awareness I believe is the key to stopping ourselves falling into the perils of chasing unattainable professional goals. Notice good, not great. The psychological consequences of being impatient
• Impatience complicates everything. Being impatient won’t benefit you in any way.
• Impatience doesn’t allow you to enjoy the present. …
• Being impatient clouds your vision. …
• It reinforces negative emotions. …
• Being impatient affects your emotional state.
(The author a teacher at Government High School Brakpora Anantnag. Views are his own)
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