The Patience of Real Growth

Once again, you water the plant today, but nothing seems to have changed. The same will be true tomorrow. Next week, most likely, will also be the same. This is what it really feels like to grow when you are halfway through it. It's invisible, frustrating, and prolonged. You come, do the work, and ask yourself if anything is really happening under the surface or if you are just following your routine, which leads nowhere. 

We are after the spectacular uncover, the point when everything is understood instantly, and the rapid change. A change that stays silent, builds on the repetition of small deeds, in the days that look the same because they're so ordinary, and in those moments when you decide to go on even though you haven't been given any proof that it matters. 

If you fail rapidly, at least you get an answer. When things don't move at all, you find yourself in that unpleasant position where you can't tell whether you are making progress or just wasting time. You compare your current position with your starting point, and the distance between the two seems to be very little. Other people, it seems, are making giant leaps while you are still walking cautiously, not even sure whether you are going in the right direction. In such cases, the frustrations and disappointments are stronger. 

This is the point where most people decide to give up because, due to the absence of visible results, they start to doubt the worthiness of the work. We've all experienced that temptation to abandon the slow buildup and pursue something that gives quicker results and thus proves that we are not just spinning our wheels. The urge to change the route, try a different method, or completely give up gets more potent with each day that resembles the one before. 

However, suppose the invisibility is actually the reason? Suppose the growth that eventually lasts is the one that requires this waiting time because a fundamental change is not about the alterations on the surface, which you can photograph, or the milestones you can celebrate? Profound change alters the base, changes the way you think, how you react, and how you move around the world when no one is watching. Such change is found in the totality of days in which you keep doing the thing over and over and again, and you trust that the repetition is what is creating something firm inside you. 

Patience stands for being there at a time when you really want to quit because you are still not able to see any results. Patience is also trusting your own way when all the external signs are telling you not to. Patience means that you go on making the same investments in yourself in the long stretch between the moment of starting and that of arriving, when everything remains the same except for the fact that you grow more and more impatient with the length of time this is taking. Endurance is what differentiates those who merely talk about change from those who actually become different people. 

Try to recall the things in your life that have actually changed gradually over time. For example, relationships that became stronger due to many years of small talk, skills that were developed through months of feeling incompetent until one day a sudden understanding was felt, or habits that you found it necessary to force for several weeks until later they started to come naturally. All these things happened because you did not give up on them and stayed with them long enough for the change to take root, long enough for the new way of being to become a part of your nature rather than something that you have to maintain consciously. 

The work that you are engaged in now, and which gives you the impression that it is leading nowhere, is teaching you to rely on yourself without necessarily wanting to see evidence all the time, and also that your value is not the thing that is fast progress. It is schooling you to learn that it is practice that should be done, and not just for the outcomes to be found. These teachings come from the choice to keep going when success appears to be very far away. 

Repetition is the means through which new patterns become non-conscious, habitual; it is the method through which your brain comes to accept that this new way of doing things is not merely a temporary trial but a serious, lasting commitment. Repetition is what finally results in the transformation of one’s intention into one’s identity. You become a different person by repeatedly making the new version of yourself your choice until, at some point, making any other choice feels incorrect. 

There will be moments when you look around and feel left behind. Others will hit milestones you are still working toward. They will celebrate breakthroughs while you are still in the trenches. Those moments will test whether you actually believe in your path or if you were just following it because you thought it would lead somewhere impressive by now. This is when you learn what you are really made of, not when things are working, but when you cannot tell if they are working at all, and you decide to continue anyway. 

For you to grow, you need to make peace with uncertainty and invest time and energy into something without guaranteed returns. You measure progress by how you feel internally rather than by what you can show externally. You must believe that the person you are becoming is worth the wait, worth the days when nothing seems to change, and worth the discomfort of not knowing if you are doing this right. 

Making the world a better place for the long-term is the people who realize that significant changes take a long time to become a part of, that you have to have a strong base before you can build higher, and that if you hurry the work, you will only get a weak one that will not be able to support when you apply force. They are the ones who have learned to find peace in the middle, trust the stillness, and keep showing up when showing up is all they can do. 

Every day you choose your process over immediate gratification, you are building endurance. Each time you go on even though you don't see any results, you increase your faith in yourself and each time you refrain from the tempting idea of giving up for something more attractive, you are affirming that you know what really matters. That patience, that acceptance of sticking to something which feels slow, is going to take you much further than any quick fix could. 

When you look back and realize how far you have come, when something that used to feel impossible now feels natural, and when you recognize that who you are now is fundamentally different from who you were when you started, then you will appreciate growth. That revelation is coming for you, too, but only if you stay long enough to meet it, only if you keep choosing this path when choosing it makes no logical sense, and only if you believe that what you are building in the invisible hours is real, valuable, and worth every frustrating, ordinary, unremarkable day it takes to get there. 

The transformation is happening. Trust the process, yourself, and trust that patience is not wasted time but the very thing that makes real growth possible.