“By long forbearance a ruler is persuaded, and a gentle tongue breaks a bone.”-Proverbs 25:15
When I read this proverb yesterday, it resonated deeply with me. I thought I knew what forbearance meant but I wanted to be sure so I looked it up and one of the definitions is patient endurance.
Think about this in relation to building a business. Isn’t this exactly what is necessary to succeed? Patient endurance is akin to persistence, but with a little more description in my eyes. If you patiently endure your personal growth process as well as the growth process of your pursuit, doors that were once closed to you will eventually open. But you have to operate with the second part of the proverb: a gentle tongue.
A gentle tongue is delivering your message with kindness. As I reflect on my personal progress in business this proverb sits right at the heart of it. I patiently endure and I speak kindly with people. This is a recipe that anyone can follow.
To this recipe I add another ingredient and that is urgent patience. I know that anything of value will take a while to fully mature into your long term goal. In relation to the big picture, each day of effort doesn’t make much of a dent, and is barely noticeable, if at all. Much like a drop of water hitting a rock. But the continuous dripping of water on the rock will eventually carve a path.
The concept of urgent patience is understanding that today’s effort matters and can’t be forgone. You must urgently pursue the drop on the rock today, because it is the forward continuous effort that leads to the result. Today should not be skipped just because it deoasn’t seem to matter. That little neglect is a massive error in judgement.
So kindly exercise urgent patience and then patiently endure, and in time you will reach your destination.
