If you asked my friends and family to describe me, no one would volunteer “patience” as one of my virtues.

I’m the person who wants to get off the plane first, be in the fastest lane at the grocery store, and say exactly what I’m thinking the moment I think it. I power-walk everywhere regardless of how early I might be. I complain about service being too slow even when I have nowhere to go.

But lately, the more I try to make something go faster, it goes slower.

I jumped lines at airport security only to be picked for random screening and bomb testing. I made a fuss about the long wait to get a receipt from a hotel’s front desk only to be barred entry from my work site due to a fire alarm. I precisely packed my groceries to make it quicker to put them away only to have everything go tumbling in my trunk as I took a curve too fast.

Aside from just generally chilling the f*ck out, how should patience show up in my life in 2019? In a year where I’m pumped to really kick some ass and go for my dreams, what does patience look like? How can I be both patient and fired up for some major manifestation?

I sat down to meditate. I was reminded of that game we played when we were kids where you would push the back of your hands into the door frame for a minute and then step out. Like magic, your arms would effortlessly rise up.

I thought about that for a minute. Standing in the doorway with my arms at my side accomplishes nothing. Patience doesn’t mean pushing snooze on my hopes and dreams and waiting for things to happen. It doesn’t mean procrastinating or putting less than my whole heart into what I want to achieve. I still need to lean into my goals and do the work. But then I need to get out of my way and let the magic happen.

For trust is the enabler of patience. A patient person can relax in the knowing that the next steps will emerge like stones on a path when the time is right. She can go with the flow because she knows her heart will never lead her astray. A patient person trusts that everything she longs for will come when she is best ready to receive it. Just like the phases of the moon, divine time happens on its own schedule.

In contrast, impatience casts doubt on the bounty of abundance. That sense of urgency often comes from a fear that someone else will take our idea and write our book before we can or paint the masterpiece in our head or otherwise take the last cookie on the plate. It rises from beliefs about scarcity, like there is only so much to go around and if I don’t act now, I may miss my moment. It’s FOMO writ large and it ignores the incomprehensible expansiveness of what is available to us.

Fear is what will slow me down more than anything. Fear of being too late, fear of making a wrong decision, fear of what people will think as I go for my dreams. All of these fears act like weights, holding me down. Just think about trying the door game with twenty pound bracelets on your wrists. I’m not going to test that, but I’m guessing my arms would barely move. They might even plunge to the ground.

So the best thing I can do is to keep dropping old beliefs and fears that are filling me with self-doubt and tanking my frequency. With those fears cleared out, I will invite in more gratitude and generosity, which recognizes all the awesome things already in my life and signals that I would love some more please. I will keep believing, keep working, keep loving life, and invite in greater patience.

Because patience really has nothing to do with ambition. It’s OK to want what I want. But once I’m clear on what I want, I need to take action in that direction and then let go of all the how’s and when’s and surrender into the knowing that it’s all being worked out in my favor. All I need to do is dream big, do the work, and trust that good things are already on the way. It may take minutes or it may take months. Whenever the time comes, I will be ready to receive it.