Patience is an important ingredient of success

I have been in the same business for over five years. But in that same period I have seen people who have tried about 5 different businesses. This month he opens a boutique and the next month he’s into salon business. If he’s told restaurants have better profits, he closes the salon and opens a restaurant. And in a few weeks if he doesn’t see the sales he expected, he abandons business and begins looking for a job.Well, there could be other reasons for the failure of such a person’s businesses, but the obvious one is lack of perseverance. He/she wants things to happen there and then. Unfortunately, success rarely comes that way. In most cases before we can achieve success in anything we have to first get tried and tested. Patience is an important ingredient of success. No one plants seeds and stays there waiting for them to grow. Once you know you have done your part by planting the seed, you return home and wait patiently. When you find yourself in a traffic jam, the virtue of patience will keep you calm. There are certain things you cannot hurry any further. You cannot set out from home to go and look for a wife of husband in one day. Correct timing is an important factor in success.I am sure there are those who are going to begin getting harsh on themselves when they find they are not achieving the resolutions they set at the beginning of 2013, yet we are now in the second month of the year. Some of them might end up abandoning what they had started because they feel results are delaying. My advice today is that, like Josh Billings once said, we need to be like a postal stamp which sticks on one thing until it gets there. As long as we are doing our part, we should always keep the courage to persevere until we see results. It’s a good principle to do your best and surrender the rest. It has been said that the route to success has no elevator (lift); everyone has to climb the stairs (steps). So, much as we are supposed to set big goals and be ambitious, we should at the same time avoid thinking we can do everything overnight. Rome was not built in one day. Don’t begin thinking bribe to quicken the process of getting contracts; don’t begin living a wicked lifestyle because you want to trap a man into marrying you.Personally, I have had to sacrifice certain luxuries which most of my friends think are must-haves because I know that spending on them will slow down my business progress. I have had to postpone some leisure activities that I would have loved to enjoy like my friends. I have had to painfully wait for the right time. Well, waiting without losing hope is one of the things that victors do. Patience pains, but it pays. Bake is the managing director of World of Inspiration & founder of the Authors’ Forum in Uganda.