You’ve likely heard the expression, “Practice makes perfect.” from your early childhood. Whether practicing dribbling a basketball, hitting a baseball, or learning your multiplication facts, lots and lots of practice often improves your skill. But what about patience? You can practice over and over but without patience, the thing you’re practicing often gets harder and harder.

Have you ever waited for a green pepper to turn red? If so, you know that takes a ton of patience. You’ve planted the seed, nurtured the seedling, and just when the pepper reached full size, you had to wait another three weeks for it to reach its potential. Sure, you could pick the green pepper, but in doing so, you wouldn’t get to taste the sweetness the pepper had to offer.

In life, practice does make perfect. But even moreso, patience makes perfect.

Patience allows a young child time to learn simple skills, like riding a bike and dressing themselves. If you’re teaching a teen how to do laundry or prepare a meal, you go step by step so they develop the confidence to eventually complete that task on their own. Patience makes perfect. Yes, it would be much easier and faster to do these things at our own speed—to dress a toddler, finish the laundry, chop the onion—but is the goal in life truly to go faster and faster toward the finish line?

Whatever you do today, do it with patience. Slow down and enjoy the little moments, and see how patience truly makes perfect.

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