patience, pacing & persistence

remember: we're playing the long game, folks

the brilliant, talented, fairytale-manifesting Ina Garten (photo from pinterest)

Ever since reading Ina Garten’s memoir, and absorbing how she genuinely manifested her real life fairytale, but it took her almost an entire lifetime—more than five decades!— to do so, shifted something in me. We live in such an age of instant-everything-all-the-time, that I think we are starting to forget that things actually take time to happen.

I, for one, have noticed a constant sense of impatience that is always, ever-so-subtly, trying to poke through the surface of my consciousness, in an effort to turn everything I do into some rushed, hasty means to an end: to get the thing I have decided I want—or most often, decided I need—immediately.

When did we become this way? And why? And how do we invert this pattern, and remember one of the cornerstone virtues of actually enjoying your life as it unfolds in front of you: patience?

I am realizing that it takes quite an active rewiring of my psyche to remember just how long things can take. I have quite vivid, lucid and ambitious visions about what I want my life to look like, how I want my future to unfold. I can tune into these visions quite easily and thoroughly. I can feel what it will be like to live inside of these visions. I can taste, touch, and smell them. I can tune in so vividly, that they practically feel like they are already here.

But they are not, in fact, here. Not yet, at least.

Because life takes time. Actualizing desires, goals, visions, and intentions takes time.

thinking about something ≠ doing the work to create it

One of the things that always used to frustrate me about writing is that I can’t just think about the idea, and then suddenly have the piece written.

There is a lag: that oh-so-wonderful chunk of time where I am attempting to extract this idea from my head, and put it into words. A process which can unfold more or less smoothly, depending on how squirmy that idea is feeling that day, and how ran-through my attention span is, willing me to do anything at all but sit and focus.

There are things I can do to accelerate that “lagging period” where I wrangle the idea out of my head and onto the page or screen, but there is nothing I can do to collapse that period of time entirely. At least not yet. Maybe some supercomputer will come along one day that takes an idea out of my mind in its fully fleshed out form. But for now, the labour of executing on the idea is up to me, just as much as the conception of the idea is up to me.

I sense that this sequence of necessary steps to bring something to life is correct. As I read Ina’s life story, I saw so clearly how all of those “lag” periods, where she was working towards a thing she wanted, trying to figure out how to get it, lead her there through these winding, unpredictable, almost mystical teachings and insights that arose for her on the journey to the thing she wanted.

In other words: that “lag” period, where our visions are taking their time to become manifest in reality, takes up most of life!

Skipping it would make no sense. Do you really want life to be these distinct moments of triumph, of climax, with no build-up, no effort to make the satisfaction rich with context and perspective, no anticipation, no digestion and integration of those moments?

Seriously: imagine that for a moment. Imagine if life was like: accomplishment, accomplishment, marriage, pregnancy, baby, baby hitting milestone, accomplishment, partner’s accomplishment, pregnant again, baby, baby #2 hitting milestone, etc. [please insert here whatever “peak” moments you have had or hope to have in your life…]

It would be much less meaningful, probably quite jarring, and almost certainly not preferable, to live this way. Compare this to how life actually works, which is much more like: mostly Just Life, with a few Peak Moments sprinkled in to punctuate what you choose to spend your time, energy and attention working towards.

zooming out, coming back

I have had a few moments lately, where I will just gaze up at something aesthetically ‘mundane’ in my life, like, say, looking up at my desk right now, across from the couch I am currently sitting on. And the scene will strike me as though it is the first time I am seeing it.

I will see all the subtle ways I have made this corner of my home, or my life, my own. The table next to my desk stocked with fresh flowers draped over a chair I picked out on one side, and a stack of herbalism and flower books I placed next to the vase on the other side. The music playing from the speakers being my latest favourite artist I now listen to as I wind down. The stationery on my desk selected from years of trial and error and curation of what I most enjoy using. The tea in my mug a concoction of three different dried herbs I keep in my cupboard, with the faintest touch of wildflower honey inside. The notebooks stacked on my desk full of recent writings, patiently waiting to be typed up… It is all just so, well, me.

photo I took yesterday of a slice of the scene I just described, the corner of my desk poking in from the right

It is these little details of my life, these micro-expressions of my interests and inclinations, made manifest in my world through patience, slowness, and by paying attention to what calls to me, that I have constructed a life that feels true to me.

This same desk sat in the house I was living in when I started taking my writing journey more seriously. I would tuck myself into it in my tiny room in the house I shared with my three roommates, and just did my best to show up to the keyboard. I tried to figure out what was tugging me towards this path, towards writing so profusely, towards taking all of this time to explore my own mind. My life looked quite different then, much more of a mosaic of what others expected of me than it was a true reflection of me. Now, it bursts with all these minor—and major!— details that reflect my preferences, effort, taste, attention, self-awareness, curation. My life is growing more and more like the visions I held then about what it could look like, every day.

photo I took at the same desk I currently write at, ~9 months before I quit my job to focus full-time on writing (& slowly creating/curating the life I am now living!)

But it’s so easy to forget this, to lose track of the visions we are manifesting, by getting too caught up in the ones we have not manifested yet. The great trick of life is to not fall for that trap. To not get so lost in what you want but do not yet have, that you forget to notice that you have what you once wanted.

This isn’t some adage that is meant to kill your ambition and make you lose all desire; it is just meant to remind you that you have a track record for getting the things that you want, and that with time, if you hold the vision, but make the space for it to manifest in ways you may not even know to expect, life tends to work out—and surprise and delight you in the process.

I am writing this mostly to myself, as it has been so easy to get ahead of myself lately. To trip over the Now trying to Just Get to the Future, Already.

But why? What is there for me, really?

If I keep this pattern up—of yearning for what is not here yet, instead of focusing fully on where I am—all that will be there for me in the next phase is that same never-ending longing. The desire for more, for what is Next, and the inability to just notice and enjoy where I am. I do not want that fate, even if it would mean getting all the things I say I want. What I really want, when I truly check in with myself, is a life that I can savour. A life that I can patiently be with, even when it is “lagging.” A life that feels like a reflection of me, even in its mundanities. I want a life I can move slowly through and enjoy each moment of. That would be the real triumph.

And I do believe that this kind of living does manifest the fairytale life you truly want in the long-term (though, of course, you cannot trick yourself into slowing down just to get the long-term fairytale—you need to actually be present and patient).

When I read Ina’s book—Ina who got pretty much all she wanted out of life—I noticed that she was always making full contact with life, with the moment or phase she was in, without trying to “get to the end of it,” or skip it to be somewhere else. She approached her life with humility, she felt that nothing was above or below her. She stepped up to the challenges, to the accolades, to the recognition, as well as to the gritty, unglamorous moments like waking up at 4am for an entire summer to bake thousands of baguettes when she couldn’t find a baker who could do a good enough job at her specialty food store. It feels like a satisfying karmic victory that her unrelenting devotion to providing her customers with perfectly created baguettes in the Hamptons, eventually landed her in her dream apartment in Paris, where she woke up to the smell of fresh baguettes and wandered downstairs to enjoy them with her husband, daily.

I really do think the “work pays off” when you take your time with it. When you don’t rush, when you truly enjoy the Just Life periods of life, instead of trying to white-knuckle through them so you can get to the next Great Moment, life slows down and becomes much more enjoyable. More rich. More you.

At least that is what I am focused on these days: being more patient with the in-between. Holding the vision, but not rushing there. Staying with the “lag”, and showing up to those times with the same enthusiasm and appreciation I hope to show up to the victorious moments and peak experiences.

Because life is mostly the in-between. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could get as much out of those in-between moments as we do the ones we supposedly “wait our whole lives for”?

My 1:1 Work — Summer Openings

I am opening up a few new 1:1 Clarity Coaching spots over the summer. If you want to identify what feels true to you and begin building your life around your authentic desires through conscious reflection, introspection, and action, apply to work with me 1:1. If you apply within the next week, we could begin working together as early as mid-June. This is a 12-week engagement, designed to create the space for transformation, integration and momentum.

Alternatively, you can book a Single Clarity Session through my site. This is a 75-minute 1:1 session that transmutes psychic fog into inner-clarity, putting you back in your center and equipping you with crisper awareness and more focused direction in your life. We identify what you truly want, address any blocks stifling action, and design a simple, clear plan of action to integrate the insights we discover. You can book a session here.

My Self-Expression & Creativity Course:

If you are ready to begin expressing yourself freely and tapping into the infinite well of ideas just waiting to be come manifest inside of you, drop your email here and I will share more about my self-guided course, Creative Liberation, a journey of tuning into your intuition, identifying your natural gifts and unlocking your unique creative intelligence.

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The next essay I am writing is about how to invert doubt. Subscribe or upgrade to read it when it’s live:

related essays you may enjoy: one thing at a time, slow down, embrace the exhale, want what you have.

Care to share how this piece landed with you, or if it brought anything to mind that you think I (or my lovely readers) could benefit from reflecting on?