If You Genuinely Want Something, Don’t Wait For It; Teach Yourself To Be Impatient
If you genuinely want something, don’t wait for it. Teach yourself to be impatient. This has been one of the biggest themes of the way I’ve lived my life.
I’m not a patient person. I don’t view patience as a virtue. I like to talk about the virtue of impatience.
When I get an idea that excites me, I want to make it happen. Immediately. Even, if that means jumping out of bed at 2:30 am, because something clicked. I like to go with my gut instinct. I want to execute on my inspiration. I want to see results. At the end of the day, I just want to create magic.
Many entrepreneurs miss great opportunities by not seizing the day. They deliberate and delay. They pontificate and procrastinate.
Meanwhile, someone else working harder, smarter and faster has beaten them to the punch.
If you genuinely want something, you have to be willing to go all-out, 24 hours a day.
Sacrifice
You sacrifice what you are, for what you can be. You have to be prepared to go without eating and sleeping, if that’s what it takes. You have to have that burning desire to be a winner. No one gets lucky in life. You can’t be an entrepreneur from 9 to 5. Success doesn’t have a clock.
There’s no such thing as a part-time life and no such thing as a part-time entrepreneur. You have to be prepared to do whatever it takes to achieve your dreams.
No Excuses
Successful entrepreneurs don’t make excuses. Sure, you’re going to encounter difficult situations and it’s going to be painful at times. But there’s nothing worse than giving up. Pain is temporary. It may last for a minute. It may last for an hour, a day or even a year. But, eventually, it will evaporate. And something else takes its place. But, if you quit, that lasts forever. There’s no going back. Always remember, pain can be endured because at the end of pain, is success.
We will live, because one day we will become. We will survive any hardship along the journey. We will make mistakes by acting fast but we will also have our successes. If we do nothing, we fail. A broken clock is right twice a day, but I’d rather be successful every hour of the day. Let there be no time for excuses.
Breathe
As one of my favorite quotes, “When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful.”
Much of what drives an entrepreneur to success is impatience, a sense of urgency, the need to make a difference and the desire to see action. It’s not in the nature of entrepreneurs to hold a democracy to ponder, plan and talk oneself out of a game-changing strategy.
You can make things happen, and happen fast, if you really want to. It’s all about choice. It’s just a question of recognizing that your natural inclination might be more methodical and takes up your time; that you feel the need to research a subject every which way.
There are times when there is certainly merit in that approach. But I’ve often found that people get caught up in “analysis paralysis” as they patiently assess the benefits of what they want to do. And that’s the way a lot of people operate because they are just dreamers not doers. Yes, they’re breathing, but are they really alive? Do they want to succeed as bad as they want to breathe?
Impatience gets results. Patience is a waste of time. There’s another saying I prefer that’s in stark contrast to the old “Patience is a virtue.” The one I prefer: “Fortune favors the bold.”
Make your breath count.
