Youth Column: Cultivate Patience to Attain Your Goal
Not everyone is endowed with the virtue called patience. Patience is a spiritual quality which can be cultivated only by employing sustained efforts towards reforming our lives. In today's world, we can witness impatience everywhere. Everyone is on the run; no one wants to wait for anyone else.
Patience is a quality that suggests several similar qualities like — restraint, tolerance, diligence, and courage. Benjamin Franklin has said — "Patience is the most powerful means to attain a desired goal." This is so because we have to first restrain ourselves from taking hasty decisions, understand the challenges facing us and then keep working with patience and diligence towards achieving our goals.
Here is a very inspiring tale about the virtue of patience. This was the time when Subhash Chandra Bose was in school. He was a brilliant student and was good in all subjects except for Bengali language. Once his Bengali teacher asked the students in his class to write an essay. Since Subhash was weak in the language, his essay had many errors. All his classmates made a lot of fun of him. One of the students said to Subhash, "You call yourself a patriot, but you don't even know your mother tongue!" This remark pinched Subhash deeply and he began to study Bengali grammar with great diligence over a long time.
On the day of the result, the class teacher announced that Subhash had come first in the class — and had got the highest marks in Bengali language as well! Every child in the class was surprised. Subhash then told his classmates — "If there is patience, diligence, interest and concentration of mind, a person can attain whatever he wants to."
Albert Einstein once disclosed this mantra of his success: "I am not intelligent but I am extremely patient. Due to this alone, I can keep working on the problems for a long time."
Professor Ramesh Sitharaman of Computer Science Department of University of Massachusetts, Amherst recently conducted a study to know the level of patience among younger generation. His survey included over sixty lakh internet users. He found that these users could wait not more than two seconds for their downloads. According to research, the reason for growing impatience among people is the ever-increasing dependence on new technological gadgets.
A Professor of Behavioral Sciences of Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, has found that the tendency to wait — which manifests itself as patience — leads to highly desirable and better results in personal and professional lives. It helps in taking the right decisions, increases resilience, improves interpersonal relationships, and helps strengthen positivity and self-confidence.
Patience is lost only when mind is nervous and anxious. Decisions taken in such a state of mind are incorrect because a disturbed mind does not have the capability of in-depth thinking. So it is necessary to calm down the mind first and take important decisions only with a composed and steady mind.
"I believe that a trusting attitude and a patient attitude go hand in hand. You see, when you let go and learn to trust God, it releases joy in your life. And when you trust God, you're able to be more patient." — Joyce Meyer