I worked for years in a business with the three core values: Open, Honest and Fair. For “Fair”, we defined that simply as “No Judgment”, and as part of thinking about that, one idea was that: “people are not right or wrong, they are simply ready or not ready”.
As I started working as a coach within that business, to build the business I’d meet people interested in working with us. Sometimes, when it appeared they were going to “sign on the dotted line” but then they didn’t, I could have felt they were “wrong” for not investing in what they needed from our support, but then I would have been judging them, I would not have been “Fair”. Instead, I would often simply anchor on being non-judgemental, simply letting it go with the mantra “ready, or not ready”.
With that relaxed perspective, I could then easily remain open to supporting people over the years, long after the early conversations, often gradually building a trusted and deep relationship whether or not they ever became a client. Over time some did become ready and signed up, some were never ready, and whatever they chose at any time I hope I’ve always been ok with that, with no judgment.
I have found that this level of relaxed patience and acceptance has served me well, as my work now almost always comes to me either from people who ultimately became ready or from people they have referred to me due to the relationship we have built over time on their journey.
In recent weeks I have had an unusually large number of reconnections with such people, where, with each of them, they may now be ready to work with me. Each of these examples dates back at least five years, some as much as a decade.
When I had the most recent such conversation the other day, it made me smile and think of a Caymanian saying, one with more than one meaning, but where one of the meanings is around simply being patient, to do what you do, do the right thing, and ultimately patience will serve you well as time solves everything.
That Caymanian saying is “Time longer than rope” and I wrote about it in depth at the beginning of last year, a rambling musing on patience and the passage of time. I hope you enjoy it and it can anchor the power of recognising that “time longer than rope”.