Good Things Come To Those Who Wait (But Aren't Exclusively Waiting)

People love saying “Good things come to those who wait” but, it doesn’t exactly work that way.

It’s close - but. You can’t just wait. Let’s refine this.

Good things come to those who are working their asses off without concern for those who think they’re just waiting.

How do you spot the difference? How do you know which you’re doing? How do you know what somebody else is doing?

Here’s the tell: Patience is (still) a virtue. Because patience implies some practice and persistence is at play.

There’s an internal effort. That’s the difference.

And I should know. I’ve been there. Seriously.

I was thinking about my “waiting around” phase this week.

When I didn’t have much going on, except work and life stuff, but I was waiting for things to get better.

My, “surely, this isn’t it, right?” era.

And I’d sit there at lunch, or maybe while driving on my commute, with a podcast playing in the background, and think, “Good things come to those who wait.”

I liked these podcast things. I thought I’d be a decent enough guest and a great host. “Maybe someday somebody will ask me” I thought.

I was so close to defining a good thing and still totally waiting instead of taking any giant baby steps.

And this becomes a key differentiator in actually waiting around versus being so focused others might mistake you for waiting around - you actually have to figure out and name what good things you want.

You have to start working towards them, proactively.

And you have to persistently stay on top of moving that needle, while being patient enough for the good to start clicking.

The confusion over defining the “good things” is the greatest trick of them all.

A good thing would be getting on or hosting a podcast but what teeny tiny baby step was I taking, at that point in time, to even point me in the direction of that “good”?

Defining the good things we want deserves a moment here.

You’re reading this post on your phone or computer. You could (I know you wouldn’t, but you could) pull up social media, start scrolling, and see roughly a million good things.

But noticing all sorts of good things and picking one you want to pursue is really hard.

The doom scroll, even over lots of good things, is still dooming.

There’s a word for information without action, and it’s entertainment.

It’s hard to stop and focus on one thing and say, “That. That’s what I want.”

Stay here, don’t click away for another minute, please.

And not even to the specificity of - “I know what I want to be when I grow up.” Just the direction of the good things. Where the good things are like a series of waypoints as opposed to destinations.

It took me years. It took me years of listening to podcasts and thinking about the format.

It took me finally changing jobs. My prior job, there were compliance reasons (and not good reasons, just stubborn old policies) that forbade me from doing non-pre-approved media. I couldn’t change them, so I changed myself out of working there, which - it helped!

It took me befriending people who would teach me and give me a shot.

And then I started hosting and occasionally getting invites to come on.

The whole process taught me something useful (even by pointlessly waiting for all that time): Good things come to those who wait, but they only come to those who are also pro-actively working on stuff in the direction of the good things they want to show up.

There is nothing idle about this process.

It’s all persistence and patience beneath the surface.

No more waiting phases over here - I’m very proud of that.

And I’m most proud of this (hey look, my YouTube channel! You’re subscribed, right?)