Latest / The Comeback Story: Real Stories of Resilience, Courage & Reinvention / Patience Isn’t Waiting: How to Stop Fidgeting and Start Living | The Comeback Story
Transcript
- Stop fidgeting. Put the phone down, close your eyes, and notice how much of your life you are spending holding your breath for a moment that hasn’t arrived yet. I want to talk about something that feels like it’s eating us alive from the inside out. It’s not anxiety, exactly. It’s not even impatience, though we often call it that. It’s the quiet, creeping belief that we are supposed to be waiting. Waiting for the promotion. Waiting for the right person to text back. Waiting for the economy to stabilize so we can finally book that trip or buy that house. We treat patience like a virtue of stillness, like we’re sitting on a porch swing, hands folded in our laps, watching the clock tick until life begins. But I’m here to tell you that this version of patience is a trap. It’s passive. It’s a surrender. And it is exhausting. When we think of patience as just... waiting, we give away our power. We stand on the sidelines of our own lives, watching others play the game, thinking that if we just stay quiet and still long enough, the universe will eventually hand us the keys. But look around. The world doesn’t stop for anyone who is merely waiting. Life happens to those who move, even if they are moving clumsily. Even if they are moving sideways. The problem isn’t that we lack time. The problem is that we’ve confused stillness with peace. We think that if we aren’t striving, we aren’t doing enough. So we fill the silence with noise, with scrolling, with planning, with worrying, because being present in the uncertainty feels too raw, too open. We’d rather be anxious than empty. Let’s sit with that for a second. Because there is another kind of patience. One that isn’t about waiting at all. One that is active, fierce, and deeply intentional. Think about the last time you planted a garden. When you put a seed in the dirt, do you dig it up every hour to check if it’s growing? Do you scream at the soil, demanding it hurry up? No. You water it. You pull the weeds. You protect it from the harsh sun or the heavy rain. You tend to it. That is active patience. It is not passive. It is work. It is a choice to trust the process while doing the necessary labor to support it. I see so many women treating their personal growth like a vending machine. They put in the effort—reading the book, going to therapy, starting the business—and then they stare at the slot, tapping their foot, expecting the result to drop down immediately. When it doesn’t, they panic. They think they did it wrong. They think they are broken. But human beings are not vending machines. We are gardens. We are complex ecosystems that require tending, not just pushing buttons. Active patience means showing up for yourself when the results aren’t visible yet. It means doing the work not because you are guaranteed a reward tomorrow, but because the work itself is who you are becoming. It is the difference between standing in line and building the bridge. One is suffering; the other is creating. I want to tell you about Elena. She came into my inbox last week, and her story stopped me cold. Elena had spent five years trying to launch her own design firm. Five years of saving money, building a portfolio, attending networking events that made her feel small and invisible. For the first three years, she was what we call passively patient. She waited for the 'right time.' She told herself, 'Once I have more clients, I’ll feel confident.' 'Once I save ten thousand dollars, I’ll quit my job.' She was holding her breath, waiting for permission to live her dream. And during those years, she felt resentful. Bitter, even. She watched younger designers succeed and felt like she was failing at success. But then, something shifted. She realized she wasn’t waiting for permission; she was waiting for certainty. And certainty doesn’t exist. So, she changed her approach. She started practicing active patience. She didn’t wait for the perfect website. She launched a messy one. She didn’t wait for the big client. She offered free workshops to local small businesses. She showed up, imperfectly, consistently. Within six months, things didn’t explode. But they moved. The resentment faded, replaced by a quiet pride in her own momentum. She told me, 'Kara, I finally realized I wasn’t stuck. I was just standing still. Once I started walking, the fog lifted.' Her breakthrough wasn’t luck. That wasn’t just luck; that was her backbone. It was the decision to trade waiting for working. We fear the middle because it’s unglamorous. We love the beginning—the excitement, the newness, the potential. And we love the end—the celebration, the trophy, the relief. But the middle? The middle is muddy. It’s where you’re sweating. It’s where you don’t know if you’re going to make it. This is where active patience lives. It’s easy to be patient when you’re seeing progress. It’s hard to be patient when you’re staring at a blank page, or a rejection email, or a bank account that hasn’t grown an inch. In those moments, passive patience screams at you to quit. To give up. To find a shortcut. Active patience asks a different question. It asks, 'What is the next right thing?' Not the next big thing. Not the magical solution. Just the next right thing. Did you drink water? Did you send that one email? Did you take a walk instead of ruminating? These tiny actions are the bricks you lay in the dark. You can’t see the wall yet, but you are building it. I remember when I was pivoting my career, feeling completely lost. I wanted to skip ahead to the part where I felt secure. But security wasn’t coming from outside. It was coming from the daily discipline of showing up. Every day I chose to write, to learn, to connect, I was choosing active patience. I was saying, 'I trust myself to handle whatever comes next, so I don’t need to rush the process.' So, how do we actually do this? How do we shift from waiting to tending? It starts with noticing when you are holding your breath. When you catch yourself checking your phone for a reply that isn’t there, pause. Take a deep breath. Ask yourself: 'Am I waiting, or am I working?' If you are waiting, get busy. Not busy with worry, but busy with care. If you are healing, heal actively. Rest intentionally. Nourish your body. Set boundaries. If you are learning, study deliberately. Practice. Fail. Try again. Make your patience a verb. Instead of saying, 'I’m waiting for my life to turn around,' say, 'I am turning my life around, one small step at a time.' This language shift matters. It moves you from victimhood to agency. It reminds you that you are the gardener, not the seed. You cannot control the weather. You cannot force the bloom. But you can control the watering. You can control the weeding. You can control the light. Focus on what is in your hands. Let go of what is in the sky. This is the dignity of struggle. It’s not pretty, but it is powerful. And it is yours. There is a profound freedom in realizing that you don’t have to wait to be happy. You don’t have to wait to be worthy. You don’t have to wait for the conditions to be perfect. They never will be. Life is always messy, always uncertain, always changing. Active patience invites you to find joy in the tending itself. To find meaning in the effort. When you stop waiting for the future to save you, you realize you have been saved all along—in the moments you chose to keep going, to keep caring, to keep believing in yourself even when no one else was watching. That wasn’t just luck; that was your backbone. Your resilience is built in these quiet moments of choice. So today, I invite you to put down the mental stopwatch. Stop counting the seconds until your life begins. Start living it now, in the active, messy, beautiful middle. Tend to your garden. Water your dreams. Pull the weeds of doubt. And trust that what you nurture will grow. Not because you forced it, but because you cared for it. That is the power of active patience. And it is available to you, right now, in this very breath. Thank you for letting me sit with you today. I’m Kara Burns. Keep tending to your garden. I’ll see you in the next one.