Have you ever been on the cross-road, wondering if you should ideally be more patient with yourself and the thing you do that has not yet produced satisfactory results, or should you maybe try a little something different instead? Albert Einstein once said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results." When do you draw the line between patience and pivot? Patience, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is defined as the ability to wait, or to continue doing something despite difficulties, or to suffer without complaining or becoming annoyed. Pivot, on the other hand, concerns changing your opinions, statements, decisions, etc. so that they are different to what they were before. While patience is a virtue, at some point, it may be wise to take a step back and look at everything that you are and have been doing, if something may need a tad bit extra fine-tuning.
One afternoon as my son was playing piano in the room while I was finishing up with my work, I heard his frustrating sighs every now and then, when the app he was referencing did not properly recognize some of the notes and chords he played. At some point, he even started slamming on specific few piano keys trying to complete the practice module with a perfect score, to move on to the next. I must admit that it was distracting me, but at the same time I tried to stop myself from rushing over out of agitation with the intent to teach him what patience is about, especially when it comes to piano. Who wouldn't love to play the tunes effortlessly but Rome is not built in a day! I continued to focus on what I was doing and left him with his occasional grunts, but also chimed in from time to time with, "It's okay, keep trying, aim for progress, not perfection."
Later that evening, it was my turn to practice and review with him what he has completed that afternoon. It was not too long after that I found myself slipping into the same frustration mode as he had earlier, unable to make sense of the reason the note was not picked up as intended. My son who was spectating behind me began to exclaim, "See mama, that happened to me as well! Something's wrong with the app." On one hand, now having experienced it myself, it was registered in my brain that perhaps the app has some flaws indeed, after all every app needs to be updated from time to time for fixes and new features. Part of my brain was saying, "That must be it!" while another part seemed to feel rather cynical, arguing with, "Are you sure you didn't do anything wrong there? The app has to work!"
As I resumed playing, feeling a little discouraged by the idea of a flawed app, suddenly I noticed my left fingers were placed two pitches lower than the middle C, instead of just one. After switching the placement of my left fingers and repeated the last few practice modules, everything became easy and smooth, and funnily enough, the app did not seem to be having much annoying hiccups either! My son looked at me, looking a bit stunned, while I explained what needed to happen to play the right tunes. I could imagine him telling himself, just like I did to myself a few moments ago, "Oh, I didn't realize that." In fact, at the start of each practice module, there was a pop-up reminder at the bottom right hand corner, suggesting, "Make sure to check the position of your fingers on the keyboard!" which we both have gladly ignored many times over. We had to laugh at our own folly, wanting to cast blame on the app instead. After that seemingly eye-opening experience, I sat and thought to myself the following:
When things do not go our way, the default mechanism is almost always to find something or someone else to blame because it feels easily justified when our ego feels challenged. We can enumerate so many external reasons which have caused the experience we have and somehow, our own mistakes or contributions to it are the hardest to spot and admit. And the more we hold our attention on the very object or subject of blame, the more real it becomes as such we tend to filter or block out other reasons that could explain better about what happened. This is how our thoughts can control the reality of the world we live in. When we blame it on external things, it makes us feel the lack of control which then threatens the patience we have for our endeavours. This is the part where we feel like screaming out, 'It is not working!!"
Having awareness that we are doing the 'blaming' is the first step to loosening its grip and weakening its potential to continue creating more assumptive thought cycles in our heads. It helps us to maintain the patience that we already have while looking at any noises in the process, as signs of attention for further change or improvements. It is done in a way through which we feel everything is still moving in the direction we want despite the minor hiccups here and there. The second part of the awareness then flows towards how it continues to make us feel as the same conditions ensue, with our parallel curiosity and motivation to look for solutions. When patience is met with frustrations, the signal for us to pivot becomes stronger. It is an urge within us to actively imagine and expect things to be better than they are so that it intrigues us enough wanting to bridge the gap and summons more inspirations to mobilize it. This may be the juncture where we start to see the bigger picture and understand how certain things can be done in a different way to achieve the outcome we want.
Sometimes we can be so dogged in what we do, day in day out and we lose sight of simple shifts that can create wonders for our progress. We are geared towards making things seem more complex than it is when the solution can be way simpler than it appears to be and sometimes, even right before our eyes. When our mind is too occupied by all the misleading external reasons, it has the tendency to obscure and hide the solution from our own perception. Sometimes, what we need to do is just to notice when our patience wears thin and the feelings it evokes in us to get curious, think simple and beyond, change the way we think and act, and escape the vicious cycle of confusion and frustrations. Keep asking yourself when your gut-feel suggests something odd, "What is it that I am not noticing here?" and see what comes up. You may well be greeted by the inspiration you need to solve the little annoyance you have.
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