Practicing Patience

Weekly wisdom to level up your creative life in 3 minutes, for free.

A SHORT STORY

Spending time in Dharamsala, India, I once hiked into the Himalayan mountains to visit some monks who had been living in isolation for up to 20 years.

Alongside my friend, Geshe Damchoe, we spoke to one monk who shared why he had decided to retreat into solitude for seven years.

He simply told us: "After my study, I knew I needed to put my knowledge into practice. I needed to live by my values."

This past week, I’ve been thinking a lot about the patience it takes to live by one’s values. I'm constantly realizing that it’s not something that can be achieved in moments of grand gestures but rather in the small, often uncomfortable, daily choices. It requires constant reflection, constant correction. Patience is not passive. It's an act of returning again and again to what matters, especially when the mind and body want to flee.

So, in my own small way, I’ve been practicing patience—just sitting in silence.

At first, you sit there and your body tries to escape, your mind tells stories, and you begin to doubt—What am I doing? I’m doing it wrong. I’ve been doing it for all these years, and nothing is happening.

Yet, the task is simple: to sit, to find the center, to trust that underneath all the noise, something is happening.

And maybe that’s what patience really is— the willingness to stay with the storm, to trust that beneath the surface, the calm is there, waiting to be uncovered.

It’s a practice to live by your values—like the monks on the mountain, the real work happens not in some distant future but here, in this moment, and in every moment after that.

What small, uncomfortable choice can you make today to live more fully by your values?

A CREATIVE TOOL

The retail landscape has undergone dramatic changes over the past decade, and we are now stepping into a new era of retail – Adaptive Retail. Simply put, Adaptive Retail is an evolved form of retail that brings shopping to the customer in exactly the way they want and need. It goes beyond blending the best of online and offline to adapting experiences based on an understanding of the deeper context behind the purchase, all to meet unique consumer habits and preferences.

Soon, in the future, through the use of AI and Augmented Reality - stores will adapt to each customer’s preference in real-time. In the next 10 years, the way we will shop will once again change as our online experiences will now be transferred into an augmented realities through glasses we wear. Walmart just announced their plans last week!

A PIECE OF ART

“Letters to a Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke

Being an artist means not numbering or counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come.

It does come, it always comes. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, which it does. So unconcernedly silent and vast.

I learned this every day of my life, learned it with pain I am grateful for. Patience is everything.

Grateful,

Michael