“Waiting is for losers. Bad things come to those who wait. Good things come to those who don’t take no for an answer. Stop waiting for something to happen, and start hustling for it instead.”
These are just a few of the sentiments that Google threw my way when I began researching for this week’s podcast. I’ll be honest, I found it kind of terrifying. It would appear that we have a dreadful relationship with waiting.
We have a chronic wait problem. And in this episode I talk about why this is an issue, and what we can do about it.

“We’ve got to do something!”
This is the plea of anxiety. When the mind needs to act but it doesn’t know what to do. There is no rational grounding at work. It just needs to keep busy and feel like it’s at least doing SOMETHING, even if that something is completely ineffective, or worse, more destructive.
If you’ve ever been on an aeroplane then you’ve seen this kind of anxiety at work. When everyone jumps up at the end of the flight and grabs hold of their case from the overhead locker. Despite the fact that they are not going anywhere, they’re not going to get out faster than anyone else, and they’re actually going to have to stand in an uncomfortable position for longer than necessary. Blind anxiety takes over. We feel we’ve got to do something, because we hate waiting.
Waiting and Meditation
If you meditate then you’ll have experience of waiting. In fact, meditation IS waiting. People think they’re waiting for something to happen when they meditate. But the waiting IS the thing they’re waiting for. The thing that is going to happen is the thing that is happening. Stillness. Silence. Solitude. And the impact of learning how to wait well, permeates the whole of our lives. Meditation is training for how to wait well.
Highly Sensitive People and Waiting
For HSPs, waiting can be our superfood. But if we don’t know how to consume and digest it, it can also become kryptonite. It can create anxiety, overthinking, second-guessing, and overstimulation from all the feelings that bubble up when we’re unsure of what is expected of us next.
Learning how to wait properly and well is vital for our self-nurturing.
When Are We Required to Wait?
1. When we are not in control
We need someone to make a decision. We’re waiting for results to come back from the lab. For pay day. For a tree to grow. Or for someone to get home.
2. When we are in transit
Travel is waiting. Both in a physical and metaphorical sense. When we are awaiting arrival, travelling from one place to another. Gaining a qualification, getting fit, or visiting Australia. Movement between places and moments is characterised by waiting.
3. When we desire something we don’t have
We talk about waiting for love, happiness, peace, or wholeness. And this gets attached to finding the right person, discovering our passion, or having an experience that we believe will unlock the door to whatever it is we think we’re waiting for.
4. When we anticipate
Ever said something like, “I can’t wait to go on vacation”? Or “I can’t wait for Christmas“?
We get excited or afraid about things in the future. But time doesn’t care that we want to be there now. It might be something you’re dreading, which you “just can’t wait for it to be over and done with.”
What happens when we refuse to wait? When we spend life looking for ways to avoid waiting?
We Get Bored
We become irritable, frustrated, and uncreative. Looking for things outside of our control to solve our discomfort with the in-between. Searching for a constant stream of entertainment and distractions. We may end up running a red light,