Waiting for the next big thing?

I choose these blog topics based off of recurring topics between my friends, family, and clients that seem to be impacting the overall trajectory of the day to day and even the overall big picture in their lives.

Waiting is something we are losing as a skill more and more. I don’t say this to sound like a hater or someone else using the words “delayed gratification” to sound smart. Shame is the last thing I want to induce in any person reading this. Ultimately, I believe that we are being trained by systems much larger than our one human brain to crave immediacy. In turn, I believe this has caused us to miss the seasons of waiting as special ones or even necessary ones.

Personally, I feel like I have waited for so many things: graduation, my full LPC license, my first space of my own both personally and professionally, a partner to share life with daily, and now the wait seems to be when moving to NYC will make sense, if ever?!

SO this blog may be both personal takeaways as well as some professional tid bits to create a better after taste when someone or something tells you to wait. 

First, let’s just acknowledge a few things.

Unconventional grief could be playing a role in your waiting. Maybe you find yourself bargaining with the timeline you’ll get married? Maybe you find yourself wondering if you will ever get accepted into your dream school? Or maybe you just simply thought your life would turn out different than it has. We can acknowledge you may be experiencing one of the five stages of grief: anger, denial, depression, bargaining or acceptance. I believe validating and naming what you are going through emotionally is vital to being able to work towards a healthy place with it.

It is important to then decide what YOU value personally in your specific waiting season. A question I have posed to clients is “what does it look like to wait well,” because the answer is often informative of some action oriented steps post session. 

Second, understand that feelings will convince you their presence is necessary without any grounds. 

You can absolutely feel anxious and downright angry if something isn’t happening like you thought it would, but let that feeling go into a box after an allotted amount of time. Believe it or not, you actually can have control over your emotions, specifically their expiration date. We have to make room for patience and presence, and it makes it really hard if you are maintaining an emotionally flooded state. 

Lastly, our entire lives could equate waiting for something. 

If you are human you have waited for something. My heart for everyone is that they would find a balance between validating their emotions while also accepting that they can still enjoy their present circumstance without needing answers for what comes next. I challenge you to define what presence in your life looks like for RIGHT NOW. Do you need to put your phone on DND while you take the first sips of your coffee in the morning? Do you want to plan a phone free dinner with someone you love? Do you want to romanticize the wait rather than resent it? 

The wait may not have been up to you but the quality of the liminal space you are in right now is, so don’t let the waiting have more power than it should. 

Sincerely, the person who could be better at waiting