The Power of Patience and a Shift in Perspective

I was chatting with a client recently who was making incredible progress with her anxiety. On this particular call, she came prepared with questions and issues to work through pragmatically. Not one to mess around, the second an issue was resolved, we were on to the next. 

Insert your best Aussie accent below, and bare in mind, we have a great relationship:

"Right on, Nicky. Thanks. Now, how do I get rid of my expectations?"

Fuck. Where did that come from, I thought to myself as I raced the back of my mind to see if I may have said anything that would incriminate me? I do go on about expectations all the time—deranged and unrealistic ones. Those that set you up for failure. But I don't think that's the issue here. Or is it?

Convinced I hadn't incriminated myself, I concluded we were dealing with an altogether different issue. 

Insert my soft, soothing Irish accent below:

"I don't think your expectations are the problem. I think this particular issue comes down to a lack of patience and perspective."

Note: I'm going into freestyle mode now. What follows was not part of our conversation. 

If you think about it, our biggest complaints almost always come down to time:

I don't have enough time to eat right.

I don't have enough time to meditate.

I don't have enough time to work on my problems.

I don't have time to waste. Nor do I have time for fun. 

I don't have time to be anxious right now. And I sure as shit don't have time for panic attacks. 

However, I do have enough time to drive myself to despair. There's plenty of time for that. 

Gotta do more, gotta earn more, gotta acquire, be, and achieve more. More. More. More. The clock is ticking motherfucker, and I am way behind schedule. Fix me!

Easy there, partner. Keep going the way you're going, and you'll be dead long before you sort any of this shit out. 

Your relationship with time sucks (I’m guilty also)

Our perceived lack of time, hopeless impatience, and desire for instant gratification appear to be destroying us. A mindset instilled in us by society — and shit self-help — with deathly consequences. And by that, I mean, if you don't work on becoming more patient, you'll never feel free and likely look back on a life of regret because you never allowed yourself to live it. 

Let's put anxiety under the microscope:

Fuck it, let's look at negative emotions, period. When confronted with negative emotions brought on by stress, most of us refuse to accept the sentence. And in doing so, we inadvertently cause ourselves far more stress in the long run. 

Trying to suppress these emotions and deny your stress may work for a while, but they sure as shit, like the Grim Reaper himself, will catch up on you with a much nastier and more venomous bite than you can handle.  

Stress can soon turn into anxiety or panic disorder. And if you've already got that stamp in the passport, you'll likely become even more impatient and unwilling to accept the time required to heal. At least until you hit rock bottom. It's another bitch paradox because, without a change in perspective and a little patience, you're only going to screw yourself.

How would your relationship with time change if you were immortal?

You likely wouldn't give two shits and would accept the time it's going to take to sort your mental health out. One month or five years? Who cares? You're immortal. Drink a whiskey. Smoke some weed.

But you're not immortal. Ironically, if you were, you'd likely recover way faster because you've got all the time in the world. Such is the beauty of patience. 

Patience for the win.

Funny how when dealing with a physical injury, we can accept the prognosis, take a far healthier perspective and allow for the time to heal. I wonder if it's because there is a widely accepted consensus regarding the time it takes to heal most physical injuries? The mind, however, is a little more complex. 

Seduced by a desire for instant gratification, we scour the internet for a cure. And not just any cure—the most affordable, fastest, and prolific cure on the market. And as luck would have it, there's no shortage of options. 

Unfortunately, every time we seek instant gratification, we give our future selves a thunderous kick in the nuts. It is the polar opposite of self-love, self-care, or any self-shit, with, of course, the exception of self-sabotage.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not preaching. I've made all the mistakes and battered my balls. This is why I share my lesson with you today. It's because it hurts. 

These wise words are the words of Tony Robbins:

"Never substitute short term pleasure for long term happiness."

Words I resonate deeply with because that is how I approached my life for years with brutal consequences. 

Sure, I loved getting fucked up. There was plenty of fun along the way—anything for a moment's reprieve. But this only prolonged, exaggerated, and compounded the pain, which was beating the absolute frailing shit out of me and my emotions as it played ping-pong between panic attacks, anxiety, and depression. 

I know, I know, cry me a river! But there's nothing unique about what I experienced. A common theme for many, the more we succumb to the lure of instant gratification and all its false promises, the more it destroys us later in life. 

What happens when you throw a little patience and perspective into the mix?

Susanne's issue was that after a year of being sick and just starting to pick herself back up, her fitness and strength weren't what they used to be. 

By lowering her expectations, she wanted to accept that this was how things would be now. Period. But what she really needed was to show herself some compassion, look back only a month to see how far she had come, and accept it's going to take a little time to be as strong — or stronger — than she was just a short year ago. 

All she needed was patience and perspective. 

So simple. When she looked at it differently and permitted herself to be patient, she could celebrate her progress. She went from seeing herself as a loser to a winner—all from a shift in perspective. And she felt that victory immediately. 

As Matthew McConaughey would say, "Greenlight!"

What's normal anyway?

Anyone who has experienced severe anxiety or panic attacks can undoubtedly relate to a longing for the good ol' days when things were just "normal." 

For a decade, I would have done anything to travel back in time—anything to feel normal again. And then something happened: I had forgotten what normal was. I had become so engrossed in personal development and self-help that my definition of "normal" was severely distorted. 

In addition to getting my life back before panic attacked, I now also wanted to be the happiest, healthiest, most confident, richest, successful motherfucker on the planet. Because that's the kind of garbage the self-help industry will feed you if your spidey senses aren't alert to it. 

One panic attack can sentence you to weeks, months, or years of torture spent trying to figure this shit out — how to return to normal? And the longer it goes on, the more likely you will forget what normal actually is as you gain what we will call a faulty skewed perception of normality.

Is it a natural evolution?

When panic attacks, you become hyper-aware of your new reality—a reality that sucks. As time moves on, it's natural to long for the good ol' days when everything seemed so, well, normal. 

One major problem to arise from this is that we often forget the many shitty days we had before anxiety settled in. We forget shitty days are part of the human experience. 

Because our cognition becomes so distorted, many develop this underlying desire to live completely free of anxiety. And won't settle for anything less. This, if you ask me, fucks everything up. 

And who can blame you? People aren't just selling cures to an emotion. They are selling complete freedom and happiness. They are selling a lifestyle as well as their dreams. They're selling a lie. 

So now, instead of just eliminating the panic attacks or reducing the severity of your anxiety, you've somehow come to believe you can — and probably should — be Batman or Wonderwoman. 

It's bullshit. That's not normal. It's delusional. It's self-sabotage. 

I have read so many books on anxiety where the author presents a method offering complete freedom without even asking the reader to enquire within as to what's the cause? They don't even suggest some lifestyle changes. 

More bullshit. May I suggest you turn your bullshit radar way up?

If you think your expectations have become skewed and are now contributing to your distress, why not look a little closer and ask yourself if they are realistic? 

If not, why not reframe them? Accept that it will take a little time. Be proud of yourself for the steps you have taken. And keep marching forward—one step at a time. 

And with that, I'll leave you with this final quote from Tony Robbins:

"Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years."

Perspective: shift it. Patience: seek it. Gratification: delay it. These, if you ask me, are three of the greatest gifts you can give yourself.

The end.