WorkLife Balance & Serenity: Peace in Perseverance

Get on With it! Not so fast.

The sign post to the left asks you not to enter the building through the sliding doors, but instead to go around the building  – a further distance – through a different door. There’s a good reason for this. Simply, this beautiful garden and new grass is still taking hold in front of the porch, and it needs to grow a bit before anyone takes a walk on it.

This garden’s roots are still taking a hold in the earth. Afterall, it takes time for plants to grow. So it’s not ready for visitors. It’s like a project that you are trying to push through, only to be told, “It’s not ripe yet. We need more time to work on it.”

Waiting for a project to be completed and delivered can be excruciating, especially when you have finished your end of the bargain, but the other parties have yet to deliver.

There may be very good reasons that the project is still percolating, and there might be some loose ends to be tied. Perhaps a little more time will birth a better outcome?

Experiencing this predicament recently, I was faced with three choices:

1. Force the issue

2. Ask politely at which stage the project is currently gestating and when it might be moving along

3. Wait patiently and persevere with a peaceful attitude

Since I’ve been involved with this important career project for some time, with complete faith in the parties I’m working with, and knowing that they have kept me informed at every stage, I only had one choice. No. 3. And with that automatically came the gift of Peace in Perseverance; an exercise that helps build resilience, instead of depleting energy.

Here’s why: When we are conflicted, we have a strong desire to influence the flow and will often take actions that might be counterproductive to the path; the path, being the steady course. Albeit, a slow and frustrating one. But it’s that journey of patient perseverance that can yield surprisingly creative fruit.

In the example above, I did everything I could do to make my needs known other than issue an ultimatum. But it was in my best interest to keep from over reacting. I trusted the people I was working with, I understood that it was in my best interest to allow them more time, and I didn’t want to throw a money wrench into the creative process. Upon surrendering to the process, I dispersed my frustration -thus leading me through a more peaceful waiting period.

Carol Anthony, author of The Philosophy of the I-Ching, best describes such a conflict of personal development in this manner:

“Inner conflict motivates us to strive to influence, and to try to serve as a fulcrum for action; we do this because our inner attitude is infected with ambition to make swift progress. Desire motivates us to sacrifice the correct way to make progress…we doubt the creative process.”

It’s difficult to decide if we should pull the plug when some are not moving as fast as we’d like. I always try to remember that there is another side to the story yet to be revealed. Still, when is enough, enough? And by which means do you take a stand in the workplace or in business?