Latest / The Strategize, Adapt, and Overcome Podcast by Brad Young / The Art of Patience: Waiting Without Losing Momentum

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The Art of Patience: Waiting Without Losing Momentum · The Strategize, Adapt, and Overcome Podcast by Brad Young

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Strategize, Adapt, and Overcome podcast by me,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Brad Young. There is a kind of person who mistakes
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: movement for progress, and I spent years being exactly that person.
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  Speaker 1: I thought that if I was busy, if I was pushing,
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  Speaker 1: if I was constantly doing something, then I was winning.
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  Speaker 1: What nobody told me is that some of the most
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  Speaker 1: powerful moves you will ever make in your life look
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  Speaker 1: from the outside like doing nothing at all. My name
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  Speaker 1: is Brad Young, and today I want to talk with
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  Speaker 1: you about patience. Not the weak, passive kind that people
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  Speaker 1: confuse with giving up, but strategic patience. The disciplined art
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  Speaker 1: of waiting for the right moment without letting your inner
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  Speaker 1: fire go out. Because there is a world of difference
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  Speaker 1: between waiting and wasting. And once you understand it, you
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  Speaker 1: will never see delay the same way again. Sun Tzu
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  Speaker 1: wrote something more than 2,000 years ago that took me
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  Speaker 1: a long time to truly understand. He said that the
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  Speaker 1: good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility
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  Speaker 1: of defeat and then waited for an opportunity of defeating
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  Speaker 1: the enemy. Read that slowly. They waited. These were not
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  Speaker 1: passive men. These were master strategists, and yet the heart
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  Speaker 1: of their skill was the willingness to wait for the
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  Speaker 1: right moment rather than forcing the wrong one. He also
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  Speaker 1: taught that he who knows when to fight and when
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  Speaker 1: not to fight will be victorious. Now notice that half
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  Speaker 1: of that wisdom is about restraint. Knowing when not to
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  Speaker 1: act is just as strategic as knowing when to strike.
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  Speaker 1: I want you to sit with how counterintuitive this is
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  Speaker 1: because we live surrounded by a culture that worships speed.
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  Speaker 1: We are told to move fast, to hustle, to seize
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  Speaker 1: everything right now, and to treat any moment of waiting
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  Speaker 1: as a moment of failure. But the strategist knows a
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  Speaker 1: deeper truth. Acting at the wrong time is often worse
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  Speaker 1: than not acting at all. A move made too early
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  Speaker 1: before the conditions are ready, before you are ready, can
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  Speaker 1: cost you far more than the patience it would have
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  Speaker 1: taken to wait. Timing is not a small detail. Timing
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  Speaker 1: is frequently the entire difference between victory and defeat. Let
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  Speaker 1: me start with the science because I never want you
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  Speaker 1: to take anything I say on faith alone. There is
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  Speaker 1: a famous body of research on delayed gratification work that
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  Speaker 1: began decades ago with a simple experiment involving children and marshmallows.
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  Speaker 1: Each child was offered a choice. They could eat one
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  Speaker 1: treat right now or wait a short while alone with
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  Speaker 1: the temptation and receive two. What made this study so
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  Speaker 1: powerful was what the researchers discovered years later. The children
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  Speaker 1: who managed to wait tended to show better outcomes across
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  Speaker 1: their lives, including stronger academic results, healthier habits, and greater
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  Speaker 1: ability to cope with stress. The ability to delay, to
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  Speaker 1: tolerate the discomfort of waiting for something better, turned out
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  Speaker 1: to be a meaningful predictor of success. Patience was not
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  Speaker 1: a personality quirk. It was a genuine strategic advantage. Now,
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  Speaker 1: I want to be careful here because that research has
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  Speaker 1: been examined and refined over the years and later studies
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  Speaker 1: show that a child's environment and circumstances played a large
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  Speaker 1: role too. That refinement actually makes the lesson more empowering,
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  Speaker 1: not less. It tells us that patience is not simply
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  Speaker 1: something you are born with or without. It is shaped
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  Speaker 1: by your conditions and crucially it can be trained. You
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  Speaker 1: can build the muscle of strategic waiting the same way
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  Speaker 1: you build any other strength through deliberate practice. in the
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  Speaker 1: right environment. That should fill you with optimism because it
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  Speaker 1: means the impatience that has cost you in the past
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  Speaker 1: is not a life sentence. It is a skill waiting
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  Speaker 1: to be developed. The Stoics understood the art of patience
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  Speaker 1: centuries before modern psychology, gave it a name, and they
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  Speaker 1: approached it with remarkable clarity. Seneca wrote at length about time,
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  Speaker 1: and he made a distinction that changed how I live.
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  Speaker 1: He said that it is not that we have a
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  Speaker 1: short time to live, but that we waste a great
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  Speaker 1: deal of it. The Stoics understood that patience is not
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  Speaker 1: about passively letting time slip through your fingers. It is
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  Speaker 1: about using time with intention while you wait. There is
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  Speaker 1: a profound difference between a person waiting idly, growing bitter
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  Speaker 1: and restless, and a person waiting actively, preparing, sharpening, and
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  Speaker 1: building while the right moment approaches. The first is wasting.
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  Speaker 1: The second is strategizing. This brings me to the real
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  Speaker 1: heart of today's conversation, and it is the phrase in
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  Speaker 1: our title, that matters most, waiting without losing momentum. Because
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  Speaker 1: here is the trap that catches so many people. They
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  Speaker 1: understand that they need to wait, but as they wait,
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  Speaker 1: something inside them starts to die. Their energy fades. Their
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  Speaker 1: belief erodes. Their discipline slips. By the time the right
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  Speaker 1: moment finally arrives, they have nothing left to seize it with.
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  Speaker 1: They waited, but they lost their momentum in the process,
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  Speaker 1: which means the Waiting was ultimately for nothing. The true
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  Speaker 1: art is learning to hold your fire while keeping your
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  Speaker 1: fire lit. So how do you do that? How do
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  Speaker 1: you wait for an external opportunity without letting your internal
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  Speaker 1: drive collapse? This is where the Stoic idea of internal
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  Speaker 1: momentum becomes so powerful. The Stoics taught that there is
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  Speaker 1: a fundamental difference between the things outside our control and
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  Speaker 1: the things within it. The timing of an opportunity, the
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  Speaker 1: decision of another person, the readiness of the market, the
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  Speaker 1: arrival of the right moment. You know, these are often
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  Speaker 1: outside your control, but your preparation, your discipline, your mindset,
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  Speaker 1: your character, these remain fully within your control at every
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  Speaker 1: single moment. Strategic patience means surrendering your grip on the
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  Speaker 1: external timeline while pouring all your energy into the internal
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  Speaker 1: work that is always yours to do. Let me make
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  Speaker 1: this concrete because philosophy without application is just entertainment. Think
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  Speaker 1: about a farmer, an image the Stoics themselves loved. The
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  Speaker 1: farmer plants the seed and then must wait. No amount
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  Speaker 1: of frustration, no amount of digging up the seed to
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  Speaker 1: check on it will make it grow faster. The waiting
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  Speaker 1: is not optional and it cannot be rushed. But notice
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  Speaker 1: what the wise farmer does during that waiting. They do
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  Speaker 1: not sit idle and resentful. They water, they tend the soil,
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  Speaker 1: they pull the weeds. They prepare the tools for harvest.
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  Speaker 1: They stay in constant motion around the thing they cannot
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  Speaker 1: force so that when the season finally turns, they are
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  Speaker 1: completely ready. That is waiting without losing momentum. That is
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  Speaker 1: patience as an act of discipline rather than a passive surrender.
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  Speaker 1: There is a stoic distinction that gives you enormous power
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  Speaker 1: here and it comes from Epictetus. He taught us to
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  Speaker 1: focus relentlessly on what is within our control and to
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  Speaker 1: release what is not. When you are stuck in a
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  Speaker 1: season of waiting, ask yourself a clarifying question. What here
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  Speaker 1: is genuinely up to me and what am I merely
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  Speaker 1: waiting on? The external opportunity, the promotion, the right partner,
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  Speaker 1: the market shift, the moment when the timing aligns, much
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  Speaker 1: of that you are waiting on. But your skills, your knowledge,
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  Speaker 1: your fitness, your relationships, your readiness, all of that is
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  Speaker 1: up to you. When you redirect your restless energy away
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  Speaker 1: from the timeline you cannot control and toward the preparation
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  Speaker 1: you can, Your waiting transforms. It stops feeling like helplessness
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  Speaker 1: and starts feeling like a strategy. Let me give you
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  Speaker 1: more research because I find it genuinely encouraging. Studies on
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  Speaker 1: grit and long-term achievement led by psychologists studying high performers
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  Speaker 1: across many fields found that the single greatest predictor of
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  Speaker 1: success was not raw talent or intelligence. It was the
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  Speaker 1: combination of passion and perseverance sustained over long stretches of time.
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  Speaker 1: The people who reached the highest levels were not the
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  Speaker 1: ones who moved the fastest in the short term. They
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  Speaker 1: were the ones who could stay committed to a goal
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  Speaker 1: through the long, slow, unglamorous middle where most people quit.
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  Speaker 1: That is patience in action. It is the willingness to
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  Speaker 1: keep tending the field through seasons when nothing visible is growing,
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  Speaker 1: trusting that the harvest is still coming. Sun Tzu understood
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  Speaker 1: this rhythm deeply. He wrote about the importance of momentum.
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  Speaker 1: describing how the quality of a decision is like the
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  Speaker 1: well-timed swoop of a falcon, which enables it to strike
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  Speaker 1: and destroy its victim. He said that energy may be
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  Speaker 1: likened to the bending of a crossbow and the decision
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  Speaker 1: to the releasing of the trigger. Sit with that image.
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  Speaker 1: The bending of the crossbow is the patient preparation, the slow,
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  Speaker 1: deliberate building of tension and readiness. The release is the
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  Speaker 1: single decisive moment of action. All that patient tension is
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  Speaker 1: is what gives the final strike its power. A crossbow
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  Speaker 1: fired before it is drawn has no force at all.
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  Speaker 1: Your patience is not the enemy of your power. Your
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  Speaker 1: patience is what loads it. Now I want to be
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  Speaker 1: honest with you about something because I think you can
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  Speaker 1: handle it. Strategic patience is uncomfortable. Waiting when every instinct
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  Speaker 1: screams at you to act, holding steady when others around
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  Speaker 1: you are rushing, staying disciplined through a season when you
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  Speaker 1: see no results. All of this goes against something deep
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  Speaker 1: in our wiring. There is real research showing that our
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  Speaker 1: brains are biased toward immediate rewards that we naturally value
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  Speaker 1: what we can have now far more than something better later.
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  Speaker 1: So when you choose patience, you are choosing to override
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  Speaker 1: an ancient impulse, and that will not feel natural at first,
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  Speaker 1: but this is exactly where the growth lies. Every time
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  Speaker 1: you resist the urge to force a premature move, you
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  Speaker 1: are strengthening one of the most valuable capacities a human
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  Speaker 1: being can possess. Let me give you a way to
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  Speaker 1: think about impatience that has changed how I handle my own.
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  Speaker 1: Impatience is almost always a form of fear wearing a disguise.
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  Speaker 1: When you feel that desperate urge to act right now,
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  Speaker 1: to force the issue, to grab something before it is ready,
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  Speaker 1: pause and look underneath it. Usually you will find fear.
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  Speaker 1: Fear that the opportunity will never come. Fear that you
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  Speaker 1: are falling behind. Fear that if you do not act immediately,
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  Speaker 1: you will be left with nothing. Strategic patience requires a quiet,
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  Speaker 1: grounded confidence, a belief that opportunities will come, that your
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  Speaker 1: preparation will meet them, and that you do not need
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  Speaker 1: to seize the wrong thing simply because you are afraid
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  Speaker 1: the right thing might not arrive. When you address the
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  Speaker 1: fear underneath, the frantic impatience begins to dissolve. Here is
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  Speaker 1: where patience connects to something even deeper, and that is
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  Speaker 1: trust in the process of your own growth. The bamboo
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  Speaker 1: plant is often used to illustrate this. And for good reason,
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  Speaker 1: when you plant certain kinds of bamboo, you can water
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  Speaker 1: and tend the ground for years and see almost nothing
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  Speaker 1: above the surface. To an impatient observer, it looks like
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  Speaker 1: total failure. But beneath the soil, the plant is building
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  Speaker 1: an enormous root system, a foundation strong enough to support
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  Speaker 1: explosive growth, and then seemingly overnight, it shoots up dramatically
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  Speaker 1: once the roots can sustain it. Your own seasons of
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  Speaker 1: patient waiting are often exactly like this. The growth You
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  Speaker 1: cannot see is the growth that makes everything else possible.
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  Speaker 1: Do not mistake the quiet building of roots for a
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  Speaker 1: lack of progress. Let me give you something concrete to
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  Speaker 1: carry into your own life because none of this matters
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  Speaker 1: if it just stays theoretical. The next time you find
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  Speaker 1: yourself in a season of waiting, frustrated that the timing
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  Speaker 1: has not aligned, I want you to run a simple practice. First,
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  Speaker 1: name clearly what you are waiting on that is outside
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  Speaker 1: your control and consciously release your grip on its timeline. Second,
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  Speaker 1: identify one area of preparation that is fully within your
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  Speaker 1: control and pour your restless energy there instead. Third, remind
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  Speaker 1: yourself that you are drawing the crossbow, building the tension
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  Speaker 1: that will give your eventual action its force. Release the timeline,
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  Speaker 1: redirect the energy, and remember the crossbow. Do this consistently
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  Speaker 1: and your waiting will stop draining you and start strengthening you.
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  Speaker 1: I want you to see your whole journey through this
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  Speaker 1: lens now Almost everything worth having in life requires a
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  Speaker 1: season of patient, active waiting. The meaningful career, the deep relationship,
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  Speaker 1: the mastered skill, the transformed character, none of these arrive
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  Speaker 1: instantly and none of them respond to force. They respond
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  Speaker 1: to patient, consistent tending over time. The person who understands
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  Speaker 1: this stops raging against the seasons and starts working with them.
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  Speaker 1: They plant, they tend, they wait, and they stay ready
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  Speaker 1: trusting that the harvest belongs to those who did not
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  Speaker 1: abandon the field during the long, quiet middle. Think about
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  Speaker 1: who you become when strategic patience becomes your way of
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  Speaker 1: moving through the world. You become someone who no longer
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  Speaker 1: panics in the waiting because you know how to use it.
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  Speaker 1: You become someone who strikes at the right moment with
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  Speaker 1: full force because you spent the delay drawing the crossbow
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  Speaker 1: rather than letting it go slack. You become someone with
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  Speaker 1: a deep, grounded calm no longer driven by the fear
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  Speaker 1: that fuels frantic premature action and most empowering of all,
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  Speaker 1: you become the master of your own timing, patient with
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  Speaker 1: the things outside your control and relentless with the things
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  Speaker 1: within it. That is real power and it is within
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  Speaker 1: your reach. Let me pull together what I hope you
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  Speaker 1: carry out of this conversation and into your life. The
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  Speaker 1: first thing to remember is that strategic patience is active.
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  Speaker 1: not passive, because the great strategists first made themselves impossible
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  Speaker 1: to defeat and then awaited for the right moment to act.
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  Speaker 1: So knowing when not to move is just as powerful
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  Speaker 1: as knowing when to move. The second thing is that
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  Speaker 1: the ability to delay gratification is a genuine predictor of success.
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  Speaker 1: And even better, it is a skill you can train
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  Speaker 1: rather than a trait you are simply born with. The
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  Speaker 1: third thing is that you must wait without losing momentum
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  Speaker 1: because the person who waits until their inner fire goes
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  Speaker 1: out has nothing left to seize the moment with when
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  Speaker 1: it finally arrives. The fourth thing is to separate what
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  Speaker 1: you are waiting on from what is up to you,
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  Speaker 1: releasing your grip on the external timeline while pouring all
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  Speaker 1: your energy into the internal preparation that is always within
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  Speaker 1: your control. The fifth thing is that perseverance through the long,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: quiet middle matters more than raw talent because the harvest
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: belongs to those who keep tending the field through the
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: seasons when nothing visible is growing. The sixth thing is
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: that impatience is usually fear in disguise, so when you
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: feel the urge to force a premature move, look underneath
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  Speaker 1: it and steady yourself with the quiet confidence that your
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  Speaker 1: prepared self will meet the right opportunity when it comes.
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  Speaker 1: And the last thing, the one I want you to
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  Speaker 1: hold tightest, is that your patience is what loads your power,
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  Speaker 1: that every season of waiting is you drawing the crossbow,
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  Speaker 1: building the tension that gives your eventual action its full
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  Speaker 1: and decisive force. And that brings us to the end
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  Speaker 1: of today's episode. Thank you for your patience in walking
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  Speaker 1: through this with me and for giving your time and
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  Speaker 1: your attention, which are two of the most valuable things
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  Speaker 1: you own. Remember that the wisdom we explore here means
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  Speaker 1: nothing until you carry it into your life and put
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  Speaker 1: it to work. So wait with purpose, prepare with discipline,
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  Speaker 1: and trust that the right moment is coming for the
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  Speaker 1: person who stayed ready. This has been the Strategize, Adapt,
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  Speaker 1: and Overcome podcast with me, Brad Young. Until next time,
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  Speaker 1: keep strategizing, keep adapting, and keep overcoming.