Marcel Legros - Play the Game of Life

Saintly patience doesn’t happen overnight - it’s like a muscle and needs to be exercised every day. You don’t just step into the gym and lift 500 pounds on your first day - you patiently work up to it. You build the strength and tolerance to lift 500 pounds over a long period of time by training your body every day. One day, after months or years of training, you are able to lift 500 pounds and everyone will be astounded by your strength. Instead of admiring your strength, they should be admiring the patience that allowed you to train so hard for so long.

Life gives you opportunities every day to exercise your patience, if you recognize them for an opportunity instead of an obstacle. I used to say, “I’d be more patient and calm if everyone else weren’t conspiring against me. The world just keeps throwing obstacles in front of me! Why are people so crazy, slow, dumb, difficult, etc.?” Now I try to look on every delay and every difficult situation as an opportunity to exercise my patience. I simply smile and recognize that the universe is giving me an opportunity to become a better, stronger person. It’s now become a challenge to see just how long I can drive in the city without throwing a fit and cursing out loud (I’m up to four hours now). Bring it on, old people, logging trucks, and red lights; I’m exercising my patience! Pretty soon I won’t be honking my horn and flipping you the bird; how are you going to piss me off then?

Patience Isn’t Inborn - Just Ask a Two Year-Old

I’m not a naturally patient person. In fact, I’ve gone through life continuously moving from one frustrating delay to another. I’m improving my patience by repeating the following phrase whenever I encounter delays and setbacks in my life.

Life’s delays aren’t life’s denials.

Just because you don’t get what you want immediately doesn’t mean you won’t get it eventually. If I’m stuck in a traffic jam and late for an appointment, my plans might not work out according to schedule. Getting angry and upset will do nothing to improve the situation - when I’m angry and impatient, bad things happen.

Develop Universal Patience

The power of water is an example of how patience can be applied to your life with amazing results. One drop of water falling on a stone does nothing but make it wet. But if that same drip is repeated over and over again for thousands of years, water will easily drill a hole right through the middle of the stone. Consider blogging: if you write three, five hundred word articles a week, for one year, you’ll have written an average length fiction novel at the end of that year. Just to give you perspective, J.R.R. Tolkien spent 14 years writing the Lord of the Rings; it’s word count is just over 300,000. If you apply the same blogging example above, you can easily write over 1,092,000 words - enough time to write two epic novels with room to spare!

Write your great novel one blog entry at a time.

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Use a “surveillance” camera to help you perform at a higher level. One trick to help you stay productive is to imagine that you have a surveillance camera recording your every move, as you go through the day. As you do things that might not look so good when the tape is played back, you will find yourself aware of it, and you will stop it. So fool yourself with a “surveillance” camera, and you will find yourself staying on track.

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Refuse to let your limitations stand in the way of your success. Everyone has limitations, but not everyone lets them stop them. Look at what you stopping you and see if you can ignore the limitations. Try what you want to do, without regard to your limitations, and see what happens. Take one minute and work on something you think you can’t do because of some limitations, and see what happens. If you make progress, take another minute, and another minute, pretty soon you will find that you completed your project, in spite of your limitations.

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Two men are standing by the shore of a lake.

‘I’ll bet I can swim across this lake to to other side,” the first man says to the other.

“No you can’t! I’ll take you up on that bet,” the second man replied.The first man strips off his clothes, jumps in the lake and begins swimming. After about 20 minutes, he’s nearly to the other side. He gets about 10 feet from the beach, then turns around and swims back.

The first man is amazed and yells across the lake, “What the hell are you doing? You were almost there!”

“I got too tired, so I’m coming back!”

Of course, this joke is ridiculous. Who would give up 10 feet short of their goal when quitting required 10 times the effort? The answer: almost everyone.

Consider the law student who studies for years and pays thousands of dollars to a university, only to give up and fail her bar exam. Consider the blogger who writes faithfully for months, only to quit because there are only 10 visitors coming to his site every day. How about the employee who passes up an expensive training course that would prepare him for a real career once it’s completed. Maybe you think it’s too difficult to save $200 a month to invest in assets that will pay for all your living expenses when you retire.

What Do People Mean By “Don’t Work Hard, Work Smart?”

Pushing hard until you reach your goal is always tough, but the quitting is even tougher. It takes desire, focus, faith, imagination, and effort to be successful. Mediocrity only requires effort, so many people think it’s the easier path. There’s nothing wrong with being average, as long as you’re happy paying your dues with 10 times the effort. Do you want to work hard for low pay all your life? That’s the cost of taking the ‘easier’ path. Working “smart” doesn’t mean it’s effortless - it means you use your mind to achieve greater rewards and better results. Pretty simple, huh?

Great ideas, great riches, and great people are created with focus, desire, faith, and imagination. Nurture these qualities and don’t give up when you’re 10 feet from your goal - it’s a long swim back.

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Learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable, as Dr. Rob Gilbert says. He says you need to go through uncomfortable things, to get the payoff and be comfortable. Things like exercise, cold calling in sales, etc, are all uncomfortable, but they lead to payoffs down the line. Try to find some immediate payoff in being uncomfortable, in order to help you stay motivated during your periods of discomfort.

So view your discomfort as a good thing, you are on your way to the payoff.

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“Oops, I forgot to pick up the milk, and sign the permission slip for my son’s field trip!”

Why do we forget the little things? Simple - you only remember what is emotionally important to you.

Unless you’re already financially free or self-employed, I’ll bet you’ve been late to work at least once this year. What if I said; “Come to work at 4 am every morning for a year. If you’re on time every day, I’ll give you a million dollars?” I’m positive that 100% of you would show up on time every day. A million dollars is far more emotionally important to you than getting your beauty sleep. Your actions are always a reflection of what you value; they are driven by the emotional payoff you receive.

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Those who wish to keep a rule of life
Must guard their minds in perfect self-possession
Without this guard upon the mind,
No discipline can ever be maintained.

Wandering where it will, the elephant of mind,
Will us down to pains of deepest hell.
No worldly beast, however wild,
Could bring upon us such calamities.

If, with mindfulness’ rope,
The elephant of the mind is tethered all around,
Our fears will come to nothing,
Every virtue drop into our hands.

Tigers, lions, elephants, and bears,
Snakes and every hostile beast,
Those who guard the prisoners in hell,
All ghosts and ghouls and every evil phantom,

By simple binding of this mind alone,
All these things are likewise bound.
By simple taming of this mind alone,
All these things are likewise tamed.

Source: The Way of the Bodhisattva - Shantideva - Chapter 5

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Stress is a poor, misunderstood creature. It’s vilified and treated as a mortal enemy. People want to conquer it, manage it, and escape from it. Stress management products are everywhere. Yet stress not your enemy - it’s your best friend. Stress is healthy and necessary for your growth and survival. That ugly pit in your stomach or low-level dissatisfaction you feel isn’t stress at all. That’s anxiety, not stress. The difference is more than semantic. When you look closely, stress and anxiety are not the same at all.

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You Don’t Know You’re Dreaming
What is meditation? How do you do it? Why do it? There is nothing more powerful than awareness. Meditation is the tool you use to become aware of your inner world as well as your outer world. It is like exercise for your spirit - it strengthens your understanding of how […]

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The problem with time
The diagram above represents the human mind in time. The large gray area on the left is past. The large gray area on the right is future. The thin sliver of white in between them is the present. For most of us, this diagram also represents how much time our minds spend […]

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