Personal Finance: The Thin Line Between Patience And Wasting Time.

So just in case you haven't noticed yet, there's a thing very thin line between being patience and wasting time. I was having a conversation with a group of friends today about some of the things we did in the past that seemed like a total waste of time and some particular occasion that felt like we were just being patient and waiting for our turn. I've come to realise that the only different between two persons waiting on something is their mindset and what they do with their time whiel waiting. Both are actually being patient but one person may actually be patient and may end up profiting from the time spent while another person who was also waiting may end up not getting anything at all from the time spent waiting and that can be frustrating.

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To make this clearer, I'll make reference to the famous saying that the patient dog eats the fastest bone. There are several instance in life when I've thought to myself that the proverb isn't right because I ended up wasting my time while waiting on something. However,like I mentioned earlier, the reality and major difference between being patient and wasting time is our mindset dring the time we wait.

When waiting on an opportunity, a breakthrough or a win, we regard this as being patient and hopeful, but it could turn out to be a total waste of time and I agree that sometimes this is beyond our control, but most times from my experience, not just sitting idle and waiting on an opportunity is what makes waiting not a total waste of time. While waiting, develop yourself, try something else, do something profitable, learn something new, explore some other great options. By doing so, you'd realise that if the opportunity or win you were expecting didn't come through, then it wasn't a waste of time waiting and if it did work out, then great, you made good use of your time while waiting.

Over the years I've met so many people waiting and waiting from standing in queues, to waiting on a person, to waiting for an opportunity etc. Just so many things that take our time and we may end up regretting the time spent while waiting and conclude it was all a waste of time. But spending our time wisely by doing and engaging in something else or developing ourselves while we wait makes the difference.