Learning How To Wait
Waiting can be an incredibly frustrating season.
You might be waiting for finances to fix the car, a job opening, or the next available doctor’s appointment. You might be wading through hurting family dynamics, painful relationships, a medical report, or a legal challenge to end.
You might feel like time has slowed, the struggle will never end, and you will forever be stuck in a desperate place.
You might be trying to gather information to make a big decision while waiting for other people to do what they need to do before you can do what you need to do. One thing waits for another until it seems like the whole process is held up in waiting!
Times of learning how to wait, how to wait well with your sanity in tact, takes some effort. It takes skills, understanding, and trust.
It can take talking to a counselor or a coach or a trusted friend to learn how to wait in positive, beneficial ways.
Real life means walking through personal stories and seasons full of unknowns, unending challenges, long processes, and holding patterns that just keep holding.
Like groundhog’s day, over and over and around and around the same things until something shifts and starts to move forward.
We all know that waiting is a part of life but that doesn’t make the season any easier to endure.
As a life coach, one of the biggest things people struggle with is waiting in one way or another.
Waiting is a struggle because it means the building pressure of anxiety, stress, frustration, and chaos.
A season of having to wait often steals peace and increases fear.
Waiting for news. Waiting for support. Waiting for paperwork. Waiting for answers. Waiting for emails. Waiting for phone calls. Waiting for permissions. Waiting for details. wait. wait. wait.
Learning to Wait
Learning to navigate all the waiting and unknowns and days of messiness can overwhelm, discourage and frustrate any one of us. It feels like blank space fills the calendar as you wait from day to day.
How can we fill the blank space, the empty days, the waiting times?
What do we do? Is patiently waiting even possible?
When you feel like you can’t do anything until someone else does something or something else happens or the next thing comes together… there are some things you CAN be doing in the waiting.
Things that grow you. Help you. Build you. Prepare you.
Things that, amazingly, are actually a BIG part of the process.
Waiting can be a fruitful time in your life. I promise.
Practical Tips to Help You Learn How to Wait
1} Get Spiritual – Simply abide in Him. He has your timetable under control. Use times of waiting to dig deeper in the Word, take a Bible class, join a Bible study, extend your daily time with Jesus by reading more or journaling. Start family devotions as a regular part of your day. Use this time of waiting to grow spiritually, encourage yourself, and to lead your whole family into a time of spiritual growth. What areas are needing some attention in your heart? Are you spiritually taking advantage of your season of waiting?
2} Get Practical – Waiting is the perfect time to knock out some things on your to-do list. It’s the perfect time to get practical and work through other jobs and tasks that can be done right now. Deep clean the kitchen or sort out the closets. Go through old papers or tackle a house project that’s been sitting for a while. There’s a lot you can be doing in the waiting to accomplish other things that need to be finished.
3} Get Trained – If you are in a time of waiting, this is the perfect time to gain some extra training. Take a class, learn a new skill, dive into a non-fiction book, and discover something that you didn’t know yet.
4} Get Invested – Stop living in the future. I know… very hard to do when your whole life is wrapped up in the future. But, in this season of unknowns and waiting, it can be easy to miss the joys of right now, this moment, today. Invest your heart in today. Go to the park. Enjoy your favorite ice cream place. Find a trail you love and go for a walk. Go on your kid’s field trip. Today is still important. Invest in it.
A good question to ask yourself is, “What needs done right now?”
5} Get Prepared – I’m all about being prepared. {Enneagram6!} Information is key. Preparation saves everyone from more stress than necessary. Getting your ducks in a row is invaluable. For example, if you’re waiting for a house to sell, have that garage sale. Put some stuff in storage. Look around, prepare where you can, and gather the needed information for next steps.
If you are on the disorganized side, read this. If you need some motivation, read this.
6} Get Memories – If you are in a season of waiting, this is step can really help. Make memories. Go to the zoo. Visit a museum. Spend time with family you don’t normally see. Take a lot of pictures. Memories help everyone stay connected. Memories create pictures in your brain and make the time of waiting so much richer.
Don’t keep waiting for the next thing before you jump in to invest and make memories right now.
7} Get Mentored – Find someone to walk you through this process. Meet with your pastor and build a relationship that you can call on when things get tough. Find a friend or coach in the same season or just ahead of you. Go to a conference and meet other people learning the same things as you. Have coffee weekly with a church group or a friend. Find ways to grow and be mentored in leadership, marriage, health and so on.
8} Get Healthy – Start walking, learn how to run, join pilates, start an eating plan, look for a health coach. Find what you love or learn something new about being healthy and staying healthy. Keep the extra weight off, burn off stress and stay healthy for the many, many challenges ahead.
9} Get Answers – The problem is you probably don’t even know what to ask. You might need help asking the right questions for your specific situation to make the best decisions for the future. Every situation is different. Asking the right questions will help you get the information you need. There will always be the “I wish I’d known…” scenario but I’m finding a lot of that can be prevented by just asking the right questions to the right people.
10} Get Joy – The waiting season will eventually end. Before you know it, the next step will arrive and you’ll be where you’ve been waiting to be… only to wait again for the next step. But each time you wait, your skills grow and your abilities deepen in this thing called life. The waiting is intense but the next step will come and before you know it, you’ll be there.
Find your fight song. Take a picture. Savor the moment. Go through this list. And enjoy every step of the journey.
If you need someone to walk through the waiting with you, just reach out. I’d love to help.
What helps you in waiting seasons? How do you get through the waiting?