Site navigation and social media links
Patience, Patience, Patience
Blog | November 23, 2014
“You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.” – Anne Lamott
When we talk about fitness and wellbeing, it’s not just about breaking a sweat, looking good and eating your vegetables. Okay, well it is to some extent, but really fitness and wellbeing are about redirecting the course of your life toward a healthier, infinitely more satisfying sense of who you are. This, of course, is no easy task. It not only requires diligence and hard work, it requires patience.
Patience is, of course, a term that we’ve all heard half a million times. In practice though it’s a trait that most of us find incredibly difficult to follow unless you happen to be the Dalai Lama in which case there’s no need to read any further.
Much of the dysfunction that occurs in the world of fitness – fad diets, steroids, diet pills, even some eating disorders – can be attributed to an utter lack of patience. We want a quick fix to problems or dilemmas that have been built up over months if not years. This requires us to take a steady, long-term approach in equal, if not greater, measure. As farmers are always quick to point out, you simply can’t rush the harvest. You can only work hard and wait.
Often the notion of patience seems like a boring, yawn-inducing chore. We want what we want and we want it now and there’s no point twiddling our proverbial thumbs right? What we’re forgetting is that patience can be one of our greatest strengths. And we’re in the business of building strength – body, mind, even soul.
“The strongest of all warriors are these two: Time and Patience.” – Leo Tolstoy
It is patience that allows us to steadily build our strength and stamina, to shed unwanted pounds in healthy manner and to endure, even thrive during our hardest days or weeks of workouts. It is patience that gets us through our most difficult times in life and nurtures unforeseen strength and growth that may never occurred had we settled for a shortcut.
Have you been feeling impatient lately with your diet and fitness goals or even with life in general? Share them with me. We’re all in this together.
P.S. I’d like to thank each and everyone one of you for being so wonderfully patient with the transition to the new, improved site!
Private Member |
Patience is something I struggle with not only with my results but with my three daughters I feel pretty bad admitting that ;-( in saying that when I clean up my diet my mood and life improves for the better :-), I know its my diet, I have been studying a lot of your nutrition posts and I feel like something is “clicking” now! 🙂 Love all the knowledge you are sharing with us it really helps me! Thanx Z looking forward to a brand new week and setting good intensions Xox
Private Member |
Sometimes I have a feeling that dwell in one place and no development. I do not keep a strict diet and this is an obstacle. I love chocolate and sweet 🙂 When I’m nervous I eat a lot and as I train no progress. When I’m working I eat irregularly and then when you go eat more. Can you write an article for those who have back problems, knees and joints in general. Explain what is useful for them food workouts.
Your studio is wonderful and I will follow whatever the changes undergone.
Always with you warrior Zuzka
Greetings from Bulgaria: Maria
Private Member |
I’m not so patient and I am from Bulgaria too 😀 Hi 😀
Private Member |
Dear Zuzka (Zuzko:), first I want to thank you for everything you do for other people. You are such inspiring person totally glowing with positive energy!
I had heard about you before but looked your site up for the first time just a few weeks ago as I aim to build muscles. I have been long-distance running for few years which I still enjoy, but came to the point when I want to feel strong, want to do a pullup one day or even a regular pushup. I have read many articles about how to gain muscles and HIIT came out as the most effective way. It is so much fun, I am totally into it.
Zuzko, what you do is amazing. You encourage others to love their bodies, themselves, their lives… You show others that healthy lifestyle is something natural and essential… You inspire others to push themselves and to reach their goals. Wow. I am from the Czech republic and you may remember from your life here (I don’t know what exactly your lifestory is) that another person’s success or achievement is something that many people can’t stand. Many people envy others and rather despise them than admire them and take them as a motivation. They are too lazy, too comfortable to take actions. It is easier to talk about what they want than to actually get up and do it. It makes me sad. Many people also don’t realize there was a hard work behind the success, it didn’t come out of blue.. patience and hard work. I lived in the US for one year and what I really enjoyed was the encouragement people gave to others. So I am always very happy when I see people who decided to chase their dreams by actually doing it. It is great your dreams came true. So much effort you and people who helped you put into it… Klobouk dolu Zuzko 🙂
Your workouts are the best, can’t wait for today’s! Wish you only the best, have a great Sunday!
Private Member |
lake tahoe, nv, usa
Thank you Bara, I believe that you can’t achieve success yourself if you don’t wish success on others. The energy we put out there in form of our thoughts comes right back to us. You understand it, and maybe it’s because you traveled and seen other places where people embrace success inside of their community. I saddens me too when I see Czech people acting the way you described and I have came across it a lot, which is a shame. I believe that we as a nation are amazing people, with an incredible potential. I feel like the younger generation is changing for the better as they have more access to connect with people from all over the world and get out of their little bubble.
Private Member |
True, we must believe. Things like this make me very anxious and I must say I am going to a therapist.
But WORKING OUT with you and RUNNING every morning helps a lot. People say “What is she doing??”…But I dont care. It makes ME happy. Thanks a lot! 🙂
Private Member |
I have lived in many countries and now settled in Czech (I am a British born Indian) and I have to say that the Czechs are a nation of people not afraid of sport and don’t take bad conditions as an excuse not to do anything. My czech boyfriend cycles to work even in the snow…we live about 30kms from our workplaces. It was my inspiration when I came here to do more than I did before. At age 35 I learnt swimming..got more running done and started road biking. Had a (half Czech!) baby and thanks to Zuzkas workouts when I was 20kilos overweight, post-labour backache and tired… I lost all of it and more..(by the time baby was 7 months!). I did workouts in EVERY nap she took, by 8 weeks I had run 8kms again…and by 11 weeks was back on my first road ride (surprised myself at 40km when was hoping I could do 25!). I think excuses are what we make ourselves, not what others project onto us. I have no family support, a full-time job(I have to travel) a baby and a boyfriend that works and trains as much as me…we just prioritise it. Zuzka..I think this is something to be written about. How our bodies should be our priority…..
Private Member |
Great article, we live in an age where we can have an book or movie on our devices instantly so patience is something that is hard to come by for a lot of people these days.
Everyone wants instant results that’s why fad diets are so popular.
Private Member |
Si me preguntaran cuáles son las claves del éxito en cualquier orden de la vida, creo que respondería: TRABAJO, DISCIPLINA Y PACIENCIA. Si trabajas duro en un proyecto (empresa, objetivo, meta, es decir, LO QUE QUIERES OBTENER o ALCANZAR) Y ERES DISCIPLINADO (HORARIO, ENTRENAMIENTO, ESTUDIO, DIETA, DESCANSO) los RESULTADOS ACABAN LLEGANDO. Sólo es cuestión de PACIENCIA. Simplemente ESPERA.
Saludos desde SPAIN.
Private Member |
Yes, I’m so impatient. I want everything immediately. I tried many diet that comes with the yoyo effect. For two years I have learned from my mistakes and I learn to contain myself. Since that, I lose weight with the most health possibe method: exercise and healthy diet. It takes times but I see big changes in my lifestyle since that. Now living in a healthy way has become a habit! So that’s pretty cool. 🙂
Private Member |
I went into the blog just searching for support and I saw this article. Even if I try to eat healthy, I follow the workouts of Z. I don’t be where I wanted. I sometimes feel that I do everything wrong, that it doesn’t t make sense to fight with myself to keep consistent, I will never be zuska, I will never beat my emotional eating, I will never feel very good and proud of my body. I find it hard to keep consistent, as well as not be hard with myself when I fail. And when results are not very rewarding, things are getting harder.
Zuska, thanks for your coaching, has been very helpful for me.
Private Member |
Hi Sofia, you do not have to be Zuzka, noone can and has to be somebody else. But you CAN be whatever YOUR want to be. I even think that we already _are_ the one, we want to be because otherwise we would not _want_ to be that person.
Believe me, not everyone wants to be someone who trains consistenly. Here, you see all the people who want that but that is because we are gathered here by this interest. So we have that in common but it is not common to everyone.
That said, you being consistent has to have something to do with the way you _feel_.
And not with who you are.
So maybe if you think about it again without blocking yourself by blaming yourself but thinking objectively about it, you can maybe find out new things about yourself. Then it is actually just a matter of being creative and finding small creative solutions for _yourself_ to stick to things more easily. Your solutions can be different than anybody elses.
Private Member |
Very nice article. I think to stay patient is one of the most challenging tasks we have in our lives. When I grew older it became easier- I think if you have a lot to do and still work out consistently and at least keep half an eye on what you eat, time will fly while you concentrate on getting other things done. And then I sometimes get compliments by others telling me “oh, you lost weight” and then I recognize the change, smile and say “no, actually not. But I worked out :)”. But it is so normal to fall behind your goals sometimes- the trick is to get back on track without beating yourself up. Humans make mistakes, and they are one of the best methods to learn for future challenges :)! And btw. Your site is absolutely amazing!
Private Member |
la valette-du-var, france
Thanks for the article 🙂 very instructive. I think impatience is one of the main reasons why we struggle with staying consistent : we want to get in shape real quick, and if we don’t get it as fast as we want, we tend to give up because we think we’ll never get there. But I’d say the main thing that makes us quit is thinking beforehand that we won’t succeed, and it’s tightly linked to patience : if we only put negative thoughts in our mind all day about ourselves, everything we see is that we need to change and that it’s URGENT. We’ll only focus on the worst and rush into things, what won’t work long term.
In a lot of different situations, doing things in a rush means having bad results, or at least not as good as we wanted, and not as fast as we wanted : if I’m studying the day before my exam, I’ll get stressed out and I won’t remember things as well as if I had begun one week before right ?! I think that’s the same thing with fitness and diet.
But if we change our mindsets, accepting ourselves as we are, acknowledging that we are who we are, with our flaws and qualities, and just thinking “I want to get there, and I will ! But I’ll take my time because, you know what, being where I am today is fine, I just want to be a better version of myself, what I’ll already be today if I do a step onto the direction I want”, we won’t be stressed out about losing weight or getting leaner, we will finally be able to peacefully focus on what’s really important : doing things right, slowly but steady, climbing each day a little higher from a base that we carefully solidified, to make sure that there is no chance we can fall.
I know, easy to say … it demands a lot of work (what doesn’t ?!), but trust me, it’s working and mostly, it’s funnier 😀
Private Member |
Great article,
Patience is so important in life! A lot of people turn away from a healthy diet because it requires patience.. I am having a hard time getting the results I want watching your videos really motivates me. Plus I would never exchange healthy lifestyle for anything 🙂