“Waiting is not just an empty hope; it contains an inner conviction that one will reach the goal.” ~I Ching
“Waiting” has a bad reputation in modern Western society. It’s no surprise that I had to turn to an ancient Chinese text (the I Ching) to find a suitable quote to begin this article. we don’t like waiting. It’s much easier to find quotes on the Internet about “taking advantage of the day and making something happen.”
I have been an impatient person for a long time in my life. I wanted something to happen to me! In my 20s, I had clear goals: to graduate from college, start a career, get married, and start a family. So I declared myself a major and started achieving my goals. When the “time” to get married came, I chose the most suitable person available and proceeded to get married.
I didn’t know much about waiting. I thought it was something you would do if you didn’t have the courage and belief. It was just an excuse for not taking action. I understand better now.
What I’ve learned since then is that waiting is one of the most powerful tools we have for creating the life we want.
The ego, or mind, is very uncomfortable with waiting. This is the part of you that is pretty much screaming, “Do something! It’s better than doing nothing!” And since we are such an ego-driven society, you’ll find plenty of outside voices to corroborate that message.
The mind hates uncertainty and prefers to make mistakes rather than simply live in a state of “not knowing” while the right path unfolds.
There is a word I love that describes this place of uncertainty. It’s a “boundary”. A liminal space lies at the edge or border between possibilities. This is a place of pure potential. You can go in any direction from here. There are no bright lights or easy-to-understand signs that say “Please walk this way.”
Liminal spaces can be very uncomfortable, and most of us tend to rush through them as quickly as possible.
If you can slow down instead, the scene will gradually become clearer as your eyes adjust to a dark room. We start using all our senses. Ego wants a bright highway to the future, but real life is more like a maze. You take one or two steps in a certain direction and then reach another turning point. Moving forward requires completely different skills, but waiting is one of the most important.
There’s a right time for everything, and it’s often not the timing we want (maybe it’s now or yesterday). There are things that happen on a subconscious level, within ourselves and others, that prepare us for the next step. Strangely enough, when the time to act comes, there is often a feeling that it is inevitable, as if it was always meant to be this way.
When I look back on my life, I see this pattern. First, look at the decisions you forced. What happened to them? Then look for the next time you “knew” what to do without thinking. So what happened?
The key to the second type of decision is to wait for a deep sense of inner knowing.
That doesn’t mean you’re certain that everything will turn out the way you want it to. Or not feeling fear. However, there is a feeling in your body that says, “Yes, now is the time,” which can be compared to the urge of a migratory bird to leave town. They don’t stop to look at maps and calendars and debate whether or not to go. They just go when the time comes.
We are also animals. We have and can cultivate an inner sensitivity that simply allows us to know what to do at the right time. But for that to happen, you have to free yourself from the mind. Thoughts are useful up to a point, but we usually think of them far beyond their usefulness.
We consider different options over and over again and try to predict the future based solely on our hopes and fears.
We endlessly talk to others about what we should do, expecting them to have the answer (and ideally trying to get everyone to agree).
We think about what we “should” do based on a variety of external measures: common sense, morality, religion, family values, finances, and more.
And usually you just add all of these up and take the best shot.
A better option is to take stock of what you know (and more importantly, what you don’t know) and then wait.
If there is an action required of you, take it, even if it seems unrelated to the question at hand. Then wait for the urge to move again. Wait proactively instead of passively. It means keeping your inner feelings in tune with your impulses and intuition. Expect answers to come. As the I Ching says, wait with “inner conviction that you will reach your goal.”
This isn’t the same kind of feeling of hesitation or procrastination that occurs when you want to try something new but are afraid to step into the unknown. If your intuition is pulling you in a certain direction and your heart is screaming at you to stop, by all means ignore your heart.
There’s a subtle but very real difference between the emotion of fear (an emotion that discourages you from doing something you want to do) and the emotion of anxiety (an emotion that warns you that a decision that looks good on the surface isn’t right for you).
In both cases, seek and trust your deep inner knowing, even if your thoughts tell you otherwise. A friend told me that her father’s best advice to her was that “deciding to get married should be the easiest decision of your life.” I wish I had known that when I made the (very vague) decision for myself.
My head told me that this was the smart thing to do and that he was a good person. But my intuition still didn’t click. I still vividly remember the many internal debates I had about whether or not to marry him, and even the dreams that revealed my inner resistance. Unfortunately, I followed my thoughts more than my instincts.
Now I know this. If you need to tell yourself something, try waiting instead. More time will reveal more.
Ignore the voice in your head that tells you that you need to make a decision right now. There’s no need to rush through life. Stay in your liminal space and see what comes to light when you sit with your anxiety. Learn to trust your gut more than your head. Trust that the right path will unfold at the perfect time. And when the time comes, do it simply and naturally, like a bird taking flight.
