If you asked me a year ago what I thought of patience I would have responded that patience was overrated. I would then say that patient people are not in a hurry to live their lives, but in the last couple months I have reconsidered my answer. Patience is not standing around forever waiting for the perfect situation to present itself. Patience is about weighing all your options and sleeping on it for a couple days. In the past, I used to be a shoot-from-the-hip kind of guy. I used to choose emotion over logic to guide my decisions. I believe that one needs both, working together, in order to make the right decisions. When I used to get drafts of marketing materials back from my designer, I would immediately look it over for five minutes then call him back to make changes. Now, I look at it once, give myself two or three days, and then call him with my comments. One day I had a conversation with a consultant who I was thinking of hiring. She got me excited about working with her, making promises that would improve my speaking fees and my profile. That night, I was sure that hiring her was not only was a good idea but a no-brainer. I was wracking my brain all night. I was a mess. The next morning I woke up and asked myself, is this a good idea? and the answer was that it was not a good idea for me at that time. I really could not explain what she did and I pretended that I had to justify my decision to investors. To tell you the truth, I found that I couldn’t justify my decision, and that was not a good sign. One of the tricks that sales people have is that they give you a sales pitch and then they give you a price but they say it’s only good for today only. They are playing on your emotions and trying to get you to buy on impulse, not product. They know if you have time to think about it, you might recognize either that you don’t need it or that it’s not a good deal after all. I have seen this countless times. One time, my parents were talking to a company about refurbishing our kitchen cabinets. After a few hours, at 10:00PM, the sales person quoted us a price and said, this price is good for today only. Are you kidding me? I am positive if my father had called the day after to ask if they would still honor the price, the salesman would. There are parts of my life where I am really patient, I am patient with people, I don’t mind repeating myself over and over again. In my career and personal life I want everything to happen tomorrow and if I’m really crazy, I want everything to happen yesterday. The important decisions in life deserve your attention, your mind, your heart, and most importantly, your time. If it’s that important, it can wait. I’m not saying that you can’t be impulsive or spontaneous, I’m just saying don’t be afraid to take your time and make a decision that you’re comfortable with.

Timelapse - Lighthouse (Oct 2012) from IMK Digital Multimedia on Vimeo.