It’s just a matter of time.

Webster's dictionary defines patience as the ability to remain calm and self-controlled when facing delays or discomfort — the art of standing your ground in the middle of discomfort, with persistence instead of passivity. Because the best experiences in life require patience to manifest.

And nothing demonstrates this better than a bamboo forest. Before you ever see a single shoot break through the soil, the roots have been spreading silently underground for years. But once that first shoot surfaces, it grows up to 35 inches in a single day. What takes the longest to reveal itself holds the title of the fastest growing plant on earth.

Life isn't meant to be driven by instant gratification, and as you step into this powerful identity, this pivot in perspective is where the god within you wakes up. This is what separates the version of you that's waiting for life to happen from the version of you that makes life happen.

And today, I'm going to show you how to close that gap and how to truly be patient, but with persistence.

The ability to shift your identity on a dime and to shape your entire reality according to it is one of the easiest things in the world to learn how to do. But make no mistake about it: understanding how to play the game and mastering it are two different sides of the same coin. What is so simple to learn may not always be as easy to practice.

A secret ingredient is required to perfect this gumbo of reality creation, and this key ingredient is always in stock — it's patience. The one thing that might be the hardest of all things to have in the twenty-first century, especially when you really want something to play out in your favor.

My grandfather's land was thick with bamboo. Each year we'd cut a path through it to reach a hidden part of land that he owned, where our family reunion was held. As a little boy, two things baffled me: that this was the only place I'd ever seen bamboo outside of pictures of China, and that the fastest-growing plant on earth is also one of the slowest to show results — its roots spend up to five years growing underground before a single shoot appears. Manifestation in action. Nature itself demonstrates what patience paired with persistence actually looks like.

Patience without persistence is just waiting — passive, directionless, and it produces nothing. And persistence without patience is desperation. When you combine them, they are the engine behind every reality you will ever create.

Because there are big rewards for those who wait yet take consistent and persistent action for the manifestation to materialize. But the world you're living in right now is designed to make you forget that.

WE — yes, you too — are living in a golden age unlike anything that's ever existed in human history. That phone in your hand is possibly the most powerful and life-altering tool ever created. At any given moment, you can search for anything you want to know. You can reach your family, your friends, a person you can't stop thinking about — instantly. You can order a meal and have it at your door in minutes. You can tap into anyone's life on demand, scrolling through their world like flipping through the pages in a magazine.

All of these things are at your fingertips every day and you probably don't think twice about any of it until it goes missing. But in your hands, any of these moments could shift into an endless amount of evidence that your life isn't better than it was last year, that money is tight and everyone is out to take it from you, that everyone else has more than you, and that the person you can't stop thinking about is thinking about everything and everyone but you.

That's the catch about these golden ages. We never consider that we're in the middle of one until we look back at it from the future.

But this kind of access we have — that near-instantaneous connection to information, people, and gratification — is a gift and a curse depending on how you use it. It has rewired something in your subconscious mind and trained you to expect everything to manifest instantly, to match the speed of Amazon and Uber. And when a certain experience you're consciously creating doesn't arrive at the speed of a Prime Day package, anger creeps in and lets its homie named fear in through the back door. That's the moment when it is the easiest to question whether you can manifest anything important at all.

You can. Yes, all of it, but patience is a requirement for the big things in life and it's also about more than sitting around waiting for the best things to manifest. Patience and persistence go hand-in-hand when holding your new identity in place while everything around you is still catching up. You can't have one without the other.

So take notes, because today you're going to understand that you're not waiting on anything or anybody. You are learning to be the version of yourself that already has the success you're seeking, and patience is the power that lets you stay in place long enough for the world to catch up to you.

The GPS

Let's start off with defining some clear roles. In life — and as you climb the ranks of creation — patience is your most loyal ally, and instant gratification is your mortal enemy.

Think back for a moment about the last time you intentionally set out to direct your awareness toward something you deeply wanted to have or achieve in your life. Be honest — something that you were afraid you might not get, or someone else might get before you.

Now, during that process, did you constantly ask yourself if you were going about it the right way? Did you obsess over whether you were doing a technique perfectly — whether you were visualizing enough times a day, whether you said the right words in your affirmations, whether you read your journal enough days in a row in an attempt to get something to manifest?

After you did all of that, did you then find yourself pulling up your Instagram multiple times a day, scanning for any sign that something actually did shift? Refreshing and scouring the web for proof that could give you a little bit more confidence about the future?

Are these the actions of someone who's confident in who they are? Because that energy — that restless, anxious meddling — is the energy of impatience, the silent confession that you don't yet believe you are who you've decided to be. You may have looked around and couldn't find physical proof that you had it yet, and you let that absence decide your future. But today, we turn that entire way of thinking on its head.

Think of this entire process like a GPS system. You've already entered your destination — that's the experience you've decided to step into, the identity you've claimed as yours. You hit go, and your subconscious mind begins routing you there.

Now, if you look at your favorite GPS app right now, the default is almost always the fastest route. When the intelligence connected to your phone decides this for you, you simply trust it. You jump in your car and you don't question every turn it tells you to make. You don't pull over to double-check the math behind the algorithm to see if it all adds up. You just drive. That's what it looks like when patience is in the driver's seat.

When impatience takes the wheel though, every time you stop and question whether this is the right path, it's the equivalent of pulling over and resetting the GPS. You start to lose the momentum you had and that impatience intensifies. When it does, you start to meddle — second-guessing, rerouting, trying to force the trip to look the way you think it should rather than what would get you there in the fastest way possible.

As a matter of fact, you may take a wrong turn and head back toward the point in your life that you just came from on accident, back toward the old identity and everyone in it. The rules of identity and manifestation operate under the same rules of nature as the GPS system does, and impatience doesn't just slow your progress — it reverses it.

So, back to patience. Staying with our GPS analogy, there is a path you have to travel in order to reach the destination in money, love, or your health. That car ride is happening whether you like it or not. So do you want that ride to be filled with discomfort and complaining, or do you want it to be so silky smooth that you actually enjoy the commute?

While you're being patient — and I mean persistent patience, the active kind — so many things are happening outside of your awareness to bring you exactly what you aimed for. And the important part that goes against everything that society has conditioned you to believe reveals itself: none of this requires any conscious effort on your part.

That's the inspired action, the divine timing, and even what's considered a miracle under all of the religious systems — but it's simply cause and effect at play. You're influencing the moves that need to be made with your psychological and physiological state. Your subconscious GPS is directing you along the fastest route of least resistance, and you are simply moving as you normally would — living, breathing, going about your day as if you already are a match for your new life — instead of trying to dictate and control each and every turn until you arrive.

While you're being patient, you cannot fathom what is unfolding on your behalf, and to be honest, ignorance is bliss. Conversations are being had that you'll never hear. Decisions are being made by people you'll never meet. So many events are conspiring in your favor to deliver every single thing you've stepped into, and impatience is one of the quickest ways to steer all of that off a cliff. Think about it: would you want to know each and every handoff that delivers your Amazon packages to your door, or do you only care about receiving it?

The manifestation network was running on autopilot for most of your life before you became aware of it. The only difference now is that you know that the network is real and that the rule set was always operating based on your identity. Leveraging these rules will switch your mind's autopilot from producing success for someone else to producing the success you want to experience. In other words, this is how you transform from a cog in the machine of someone else's dream life into the machine itself.

In practice, it can feel like a paradox — because you're choosing to be at peace on the inside while the outside has yet to take form. But here's what makes this easier than you think: if anxiety rises, you can go within, back to the map that you've already GPS'd out.

You can enter your mind, visualize, and experience what you desire right now, and it's not a delusion like others will try to convince you to think. It's important that you treat your imagination with the weight it deserves and stop writing it off as magic, superstition, or something you can't do.

Your mind holds the map of where you've been and where you're going. This outside is just a shadow of what's inside you. What you shape within yourself today will take form tomorrow and the day after that. So knowing this — knowing that the process is already working — shouldn't we make this ride a little more comfortable?

The Waiting Room

About a couple of years ago, I had an epiphany that served me well on my personal journey. Patience is always a part of nature, like in our bamboo parable. Technology may change every other month to achieve the perfection that nature already assumes daily.

It doesn't rush, and it doesn't need to. This simulation we're living in is no different than a waiting room, and we've all been in one of those in one way, shape, or form. Whether it was at the doctor's office, the dentist, or the mechanic — let's take that and put a metaphysical spin on it.

Think about the last appointment you had where you were directed to a waiting room. Try to remember every detail of that waiting room as best as you can. Picture that very room in your mind's eye. Got it? Good.

Now, remove everything from it as you remember it and continue to imagine that you're sitting in this empty room. We're going to fill it back up — but with intention.

Imagine this waiting room has one of those old fat-back TVs sitting on top of a podium, but it's locked on one channel playing reruns of a soap opera that you've never heard of in a language that you don't know how to speak.

So instead, you reach for a magazine on a nearby table, and all of them are outdated by a few years and happen to be in categories that bore the hell out of you anyway. No worries — you whip out your phone to witness it power down after being left on one percent the whole morning since you forgot to charge it. Cool, let's slide over to the coffee table. You pour yourself a little cup to get your vibes up a bit, but you realize the warmer is unplugged and the coffee is cold and muddy. No cream and no sugar. You return to your chair, defeated. You plop back down only to realize how hard and stiff it actually is — something you didn't fully notice until you stood up and moved around a little bit.

These are your conditions. So now, you wait… and wait… and wait.

Sounds horrible, doesn't it? Let's try an alternative perspective.

Re-imagine you're in this waiting room again. That TV on the wall is a 4K Smart TV with Netflix and Hulu. Nobody is watching it so you have full reign over the remote. Why is nobody watching it? The staff has provided iPads with complimentary headphones, so everyone is enjoying whatever they want to enjoy. Instead of outdated magazines, the reading table is littered with the top ten Amazon best sellers and the latest issues of the Robb Report and Resident Magazine.

Let's segue back over to that coffee table again, shall we? You have your choice of the best small-batch coffees and teas that money can buy. Ceramic coffee mugs that fit nicely in your hand, and on the inside, have a positive word of affirmation that you notice before you pour your beverage. You grab your coffee, a good book, and walk yourself back over to your comfy Herman Miller chair while you wait for your name to be called.

If you've been paying attention, you can see through the contrast I've just laid out.

During this natural process of reality transformation, one thing that is non-negotiable is patience. You have to be patient while you wait to arrive at the destination of what you want. Great things take time to manifest, and having experienced this too many times to count, it's well worth the wait. You're gaining all of the skill and knowledge to keep these manifestations in your life.

You're waiting anyway, but with the burden of instant gratification on your back, you'll be miserable while doing it. You'll be filled with anxiety, fear, jealousy, and envy. You won't be enjoying life or any of the amenities it brings, while thinking, if only whatever you desire would just hurry up and arrive, then that's when you'll feel happy and accomplished.

That's the loop that will play in your head if you're thinking from force instead of power.

On the other hand, when you're patient and persistent in your new identity, that waiting room isn't bad at all. The waiting room is essentially your life as a conscious creator — the gaps in between where you're at right now and the destination you've already predetermined.

This is the phase between starting a business and reaching your first six-figure sales month. This is the gap between the first date and the first wedding anniversary. This is the pathway between the loose notes scattered across your desk and making the New York Times best seller's list.

It's still your chosen reality — so, what should you be doing while you're "waiting" for it to catch up?

I'm glad you asked.

You're enjoying your friends and family. Whatever you're creating, you are the source of it, and from that source is where it will multiply. You show love to yourself and to others, and you receive it back. You're evoking that feeling of a better life first from within yourself so that life has no choice but to reflect it back. You're working on your business plan every day because you love to do it, regardless of whether the money is there yet. You're hitting the gym with consistency even if you don't see the fat falling off your body just yet. You are binging your favorite shows. You're taking long walks at your favorite park. You're practicing yoga, getting good workouts in, picking up a new hobby, or learning a new language. You're going to concerts and comedy shows — whatever it is that only you do, just do it.

You are simply enjoying your life while you're in the invisible waiting room.

When you do this, time flies by — and before you know it, your appointment with your new life is ready. Refining the skill of being patient is akin to that comfortable waiting room. You're going to have to wait regardless — so why not do it in style?

The Regret Minimization Framework

Now if you're still here at this point, you're what I consider a high performer, so let's take this a step further — because patience is about more than comfort, it's about courage.

Let me familiarize you with the Regret Minimization Framework. This is the same model that Jeff Bezos used before he built Amazon — before he became one of the wealthiest men to ever walk the earth. Before that timeline, he was just a guy with a run-of-the-mill but well-paying job at an investment firm in New York. He had an idea to start an online bookstore, and his boss told him to think it over. So he gave himself 48 hours to make the decision. And during those 48 hours, he asked himself one question that changed his identity. He projected himself forward to age 80 — sitting in that chair, looking back on his entire life — and weighing which decision would haunt him more: trying and failing, or never trying at all.

And the answer was immediate. He knew that if he tried and failed, he could live with that. But if he never tried — if he let fear talk him out of being patient with his dream — that would haunt him for the rest of his life. So he made the leap, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Now here's why I'm telling you this: most men truly believe that what they're afraid of is failure. That's the story they tell themselves — that they don't want to try because it might not work out. But that's only half the story.

The hidden fear is the fear of waiting. The fear of committing to something, being patient with the process, and having nothing to show for it at the end. You're not afraid to fail — you're afraid to invest the time, the energy, and the patience in a new identity without the written guarantee that it'll all work out.

So instead of dealing with the discomfort of patience, you yourself may have made the decision before to simply never get started. You may have talked yourself out of it before the GPS even loaded the route.

Study after study — conversations with people at the very end of their lives — all point to the same conclusion. When people are in the twilight of their time here in Earth School, reflecting on their life, the overwhelming majority don't regret the things they failed at. They regret what they never even attempted to do. They regret the identity they abandoned because they were too afraid to sit in the waiting room long enough to see it through.

Through patience and persistence, success is inevitable. Once you decide, it's just simply a matter of time.

And patience is not you sitting around hoping something happens. Patience is you making the same decision that Bezos made — looking at your future self and refusing to become the version of you that gave up because you couldn't handle the wait time. The bridge between who you are today and who you've already decided to become is held up on two things — patience and persistence. And the only thing that makes that bridge collapse is you walking off of it too soon.

Thank you for reading.

-Shaun