The Waiting is the Hardest Part

Lately I’ve been reflecting a lot on waiting. In particular, waiting for life to show up in alignment with my sometimes lofty expectations – with finances, physical health, relationships and more. I’ve been observing this phenomenon with my clients and also with myself. How we procrastinate waiting for life to deliver what we’ve been asking for, what we’ve envisioned, and how much time we waste in waiting. As the singer Tom Petty famously said, the waiting is the hardest part.  

But how much of the waiting is our own doing? Procrastinating on creating the life we most want to life, and then reflecting on all the time we’ve wasted as a result. And I’ve also observed, that in my own case (with all due honesty), I’ve put on excess weight waiting for things to line up the way I’ve envisioned, frustrated that those visions and imaginings I’ve cherished have yet to materialize in the real world. I’ve come up with a term for this phenomenon that I call “waiting weight”. It begs the question, what are we in control of vs being at the effect of our imagination in terms of creating a thriving life? And what are the costs we invoke to our own well-being and our ability to thrive in this contrived act of waiting?

Why We Do It

Many of us (especially those of us who lean introvert) fell into the ‘nesting zone’ during the pandemic. Using the excuse that we’ve not been in control of our mobility, our ability to engage with others and to travel, in order to feel safe and protected, and effectively avoid facing our inner demons as a result. We’ve turned to things that brought us perceived comfort like making less than healthy food choices, compromising on sleep and exercise, watching too much TV, some even leaning on substance abuse. 

Effectively we’ve waited for a version of so-called normalcy of the world we once knew to return. We’ve gone into our individual cocoons. We’ve been in a season of waiting. We’re waiting for the fear, anger, depression, loneliness and heaviness of the emotions we’ve been feeling to pass. And for some of us without families and a strong support system who are seeking comfort and nesting, that’s turned into excess weight and unhealthy habits that are primed to be re-wired to our own benefit and well-being.

It's time to awaken from a slumber we’ve fallen into with the false pretense that someone or something is going to come along and save us. We are each the hero in our own individual journey in this life; we are in fact meant to thrive vs to merely survive, and we each hold the keys to our own path and destiny.

Costs

When we fall into a state of going through the motions in our life and just surviving day-to-day, we run the risk of becoming restless, bored, detached and depressed. That invokes a downward spiral. And we can’t thrive and operate at our fullest potential when we’re in that state. That’s where trouble awaits.

When we don’t honor who we are as sovereign beings with agency, and we don’t honor our minds and bodies as temples that require care and maintenance, we can put on weight, succumb to bad habits (that may evolve into addictive behavior), have difficulty sleeping, and create disease unnecessarily. All of that can then spiral into trouble at work, challenges with relationships, ill health, lack of energy, and all manner of issues that have us moving in the wrong direction.

We can in fact, create self-fulfilling prophecies that result in our worst fears manifesting, OR just wind up wasting our lives in a stuck holding pattern that can last for months or even for many years.

Gifts of Release

The picture I’ve painted thus far may feel like doom and gloom, but I’ve seen many people in this frame for far too long (honestly, myself included at times!). But there are antidotes to these outcomes. With support, we can pull ourselves up and out of these scenarios. In my work as a trusted advisor, I’ve seen firsthand how a re-framing of the situations in our lives can result in a light bulb going off where all of a sudden we see possibilities that we haven’t been able to see on our own – and hope returns.

Hope often facilitates a turning point – and we are then freed up, liberated to take the reins of our life and stop waiting to create the life we say we want for ourselves. I was at an invite-only event called The Summit this past weekend; it’s something like TED meets Burning Man for those who are about changing the world across many different sectors. Some of the people who inspire me the most were speaking during the weekend, and it was wonderful to have the chance to connect with them intimately.

One of these individuals, Dr Mark Hyman, is a leader in the functional medicine arena and a bright light in my life; I’ve been following him and reading his books for what feels like almost twenty years. He's currently the Head of Strategy and Innovation at the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. I’ve been through all manner of specialists for endocrine-related disorders for decades, and I asked whether he was still seeing individual patients. He replied that he was not, but given I’ve read all of his books, encouraged me both to apply and integrate the knowledge I’ve gleaned AND to stop waiting. That if I was willing to do that, the excess “waiting weight” I’ve been carrying would be released and my body would return to a state of optimal well-being and homeostasis. There's my prescription, and I'm certainly all in to give it a try (starting with his "10 Day Detox Diet").

I hope my personal revelations have in some small way opened a door to help you better understand your own challenges and possibly revealed a path forward. It's true we're all unique, and yet as humans, we have so much in common; the aspects we like, and the parts of us we're still working on.

My invitation to you is to evaluate what you’re waiting for in your own life; what’s stopping you or holding you back from what you most want to manifest for yourself? What could be the gifts for you if you stop stopping, give up playing the waiting game, and take small steps towards your desired life? Reach out if this is something you'd like some support with. And of course if this resonates, comment - and of course feel free to forward and share it as well.