Patience is a worthy investment

Looking back at my life and as I entered the silver age, I somehow recalled a lot of my impulsiveness and impatience when I was younger. Perhaps I thought of things that I should or would regret but I am a believer of the saying: WE are the sum of our experiences, whether positive or negative; at any given point in our lives, none of us are the same as we were yesterday, nor will be tomorrow.

“Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.” – Carl Jung

In life, patience enables us to recognize that difficulties must be faced rather than feared. It enables us to “be still,” and recognize that every event in life is a teachable moment. Exercising patience allows us to recognize that life under any condition is worth fighting for or staying the course. And that it is never too late to fix or improve those aspects of our lives that are broken.

With this perspective, you will be able to see difficulties as opportunities to transform adversity into experiences that prove to be life-enlarging instead of life-diminishing.

Patience is an Investing Virtue

The toughest thing in stock investing is to do nothing. That’s right, nothing! Once you buy a stock and watch it move up, down and all around for a few weeks, there is an urge to take action. In investing, the big profits go to the intelligent, careful and patient investor, not to the reckless and overeager speculator.

Many investors tend to forget that the way you make money in investing (real estate, stock market, and the like) is by holding stocks/land for a period-of-time, buying and selling is just ‘the process’. The value of your portfolio rises when the value of a stock you own rises. So, you have to be holding on to a stock if you’re going to take advantage of its appreciation.

Being Patient means having a simple plan or system and sticking to it. To have the ability, to wait for a good entry point as well as a good exit opportunity. It means trusting your own system enough to invest, according to the applicable time horizon, not just paying lip service to it.

There is no one optimal investing strategy, but patience is required to reap the rewards.My Lazy-yet-Patient strategy? Diversify broadly, keep costs low, rebalance periodically and be patient.

A patient man is always richer than the impatient one, even if the patient man has less money. This is because the patient man can always afford to wait. The patient person or investor is never desperate,and has time to spare, while the one who is in a hurry will always be on the verge of bankruptcy as far as time is concerned.

Patience enables you to see the big picture. It helps you to make the most of today while building a better tomorrow. For that reason, it’s one of the most valuable equities of all, one that you should make every effort to acquire. The payoff will be worth it.

Patience is bitter but its fruit is sweet!

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I don’t know if you’ve heard this story about the Chinese Bamboo Tree before now but this is one of those lessons that really sticks with you. The Chinese Bamboo Tree teaches us success lessons on patience, perseverance, growth & development.

You plant the seeds and have to water it and fertilize it every day and it doesn't break through the ground in the first five years, but somewhere in the fifth year, it breaks through the ground and grows 90 feet in the next five years. So the question is,

Does it grow 90 feet in 5 weeks or 5 years? Easy, 5 years, because if at any point you stopped nurturing it and feeding it in that time, it wouldn't survive.

The Chinese Bamboo Tree is a perfect parable to our own experience with personal growth and change. Patience can be our greatest obstacle, it is never easy since we always want things immediately - especially in this fast paced information age that we live in today. It’s slow to show any progress. It’s frustrating and unrewarding at times. But it is sooooo worth it….especially if we can be patient and persistent.

So, whether you’re trying to lose weight, take on exercise, learn a new skill at work, investing for the long-term or starting up your business, side-hustles or projects, keep the word patience in your mind.

Allow yourself to be still, and remember that if you’re aligned with who you really are, all the pieces of the puzzle will fall into place at the right time.

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