When Waiting Starts to Feel Like Failure
We are a culture obsessed with checking things off our to-do lists. One industry website claims, “More than 182 million diaries and planners are purchased in the United States annually...” Thousands of self-help books promise help you become successful, fit more into each day, and be more efficient with your time.
When was the last time you did...nothing? I don’t mean waste time with your video game console or mindlessly binge your favorite show. I mean, actually nothing? Taking even 20 minutes to watch the wind play on the surface of a pond can be magic. Sadly, we need an app or a reminder to take these little breaks.
Stretch this a bit further. What if you took one week off? How do you feel then? If you are a typical American, research says you barely had enough time to notice you were off work. It usually takes between 8 and 14 days to recover from chronic stress that is so endemic in our lives.
Push the analogy a bit further. What if you took 6 months off? Or longer? Could you hit the proverbial pause button on all your goals for an entire year? Given our work-obsessed culture, wouldn’t it all start to feel like...failure?
But what if waiting is not the opposite of progress? What if waiting were doing something much deeper — forming you into a different person altogether? If this new version of you outgrew all the goals you used to chase, would it be worth it?
I wrote Remaining out of a season where waiting felt indistinguishable from failure.