Mastering Patience.

Today's Marketing Cookie is about the challenge of mastering patience.

You are likely to accomplish more successes with mere endurance than with sheer force. I know it's true because I've tasted the eventual sweet fruit gathered from years of bitter persistence. With all the hasty pushing, busy doing, and quick trying I could muster, there have been very few rewards given to me before their proper time. When I've gained great privilege too prematurely, I was ill-equipped to handle the responsibility, and then resented my good fortune. This is when wisdom would have acknowledged my lack of understanding and perhaps protected me from my own desires.

While there are no time machines for shortcutting the due process of success, there are occasional gaps where you can hop forward, skip ahead, or jump over the mid-game checkpoints. It's risky, but sometimes innovation and inspiration are better uses of your time than waiting for opportunity to knock on your door. I've sprinted on the fast track before and taken advantage of instant wins when I've discovered them, but quick success, my friends, is a lousy teacher in the long run.

We live in a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, microwave dinners, on-demand entertainment, and EZ-Pass toll booths. Information about everything is a Google search away and for everything else, there's a million apps for that. We no longer have the willingness to wait for good things to grow great, nor the grace to refine superficial knowledge into time-tested wisdom. Patience will be difficult before it's easy, and I suppose such pressure and time is how diamonds are formed from coal. Anything so precious must be worth the wait, and as today's fortune says, "Patience is the hardest virtue to master."