Waiting for people (your boss, your friends, whomever) to change so that you can feel happy, is like waiting to win the lottery. It may happen, but chances are that this is quite unlikely. This waiting game is very likely a fool’s errand.

Your agency

Waiting is really a place of disempowerment where you have given-up your own agency. Where you have allowed how you feel about yourself to be dictated by the unknown future actions of other people. People who may not even have the slightest concern for your wellbeing. And, it is not that there is even any ill will involved. Everyone is caught-up with their own lives and their own struggles.

Some may have the openness and grace to look beyond themselves, but don’t expect it as a given!

Seeing reality 

Often, the very desire to wait stems from not acknowledging the reality of a situation. From denying what is in plain sight because it is too painful to look at. Because it goes against the way you think things should be. So, rather than see reality for what it is, we look away, to a future we wish was true. All the time ignoring the truth of what is. And, it is precisely this looking away that keeps you stuck in a place of disempowerment. A place of confusion and inaction arising from not fully acknowledging the reality of how you feel.

Giving up your agency is not just limited to inter-personal relationships. You can very easily do the same with how you relate to life itself. In how you constantly defer happiness to some later date, to be experienced upon the reaching of some arbitrary benchmark of success that society tells you, you should. This too is a place of disempowerment.

Why wait for an unknown and elusive future when it is already within your grasp?

Forget the waiting game

So, rather than waiting for people to change or for circumstances to bring you happiness, ask what you can do now. Today.

Ask what you can do for yourself to live with a sense of peace and contentment. Don’t wait around for others to change because it may never come.

You have individual power. Use it. For, your salvation is in your own hands. 

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Harsha is a 1:1 coach and independent thinker based in London. He empowers people to find more clarity, confidence and focus in their lives — to cut through the noise, in a world so full of it. Harsha’s new book, Machine Ego: Tragedy of the Modern Mind, is now available in paperback and Kindle through Amazon.