Hi there,

It is no surprise to anyone who has been reading my notes for a while that I readily accept the label of “ambitious”. To me, being ambitious is about believing that you can do more than you are already doing. That push to do more—to get better—is what gets me to send the first email of the day and the last one. It is also what pushes me to keep looking beyond my current horizon. I believe that my life will continue to expand in front of me in ways that I have yet to wrap my head around.

However, I am learning that when you invite ambition to the table, you must also invite patience.

That is not my strong suit.

Before I go any further — lets do the housekeeping.

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Okay — back to it.

Patience is the medicine that I take in order to keep believing in my potential.

That sounds convoluted, but let me explain.

Do you remember learning about kinetic and potential energy in physics class? Kinetic energy is the energy being spent through movement. Potential energy is the energy stored in an object, caused by its circumstances, that is then spent through kinetic energy. Take a bow and arrow for example. Picture yourself lifting it into position and drawing your elbow back as you knock the arrow against the bow. In this action, you change the circumstances that the arrow is in, going from relaxed to taut, and it gains potential energy. As you release the arrow, that potential energy is transformed into kinetic energy as it shoots forward towards the target.

Now imagine that you are the arrow. The target is the life that you are trying to achieve. For most of us, I think that the target is a feeling of contentment and success, though it could be something more tangible as well. It could be a certain job title, salary, or number of fans. For me it is a mixture of the esoteric feeling of contentment and a couple of more firm goals. I want to max out my growth in my chosen field. I want to spend a good chunk of my life writing. I want to live a life that balances my need to contribute good the world with my need to nurture myself and my community. When you are the arrow, you know where you want to go. You know that you must travel a distance to get there, but you hope that it will be quick.

I think that the journey from the moment that the feathers at the end of the arrow leave the bow, to the moment that it hits the target (or the tree behind it or the ground below it) is quick. The slow part is the act of tensioning the string and imbuing the arrow with potential energy.

Not to let too much of my own belief system color this metaphor, but I see the archer as a metaphor for the universe or god or fate. The drawing back is the time you spent in your education gaining skills. It is the time that you spent in your first job and in the job that made you learn what you really don’t want to do. For me, it was in some of my misadventures that made it clear the kind of person that I want to be—which is the only kind of person who can reach that target. Fundamentally, drawing the arrow back is a metaphor for learning.

This is where the hard part comes in—patience.

I know that in order to achieve everything that I want to achieve, I need to learn a lot. If I woke up tomorrow and was offered a my dream Final State job, the one that represents the maximum level that I am able to achieve in my field, I would suck at it. If instead of knocking the arrow in the bow, you lifted it from the ground and just let go, it wouldn’t get very far.

I know this and yet it sucks. It sucks because I want to spend all of the time that I have with everything I want. It sucks because learning is really really hard.

I am not equipped to give advice on how to be patient. What I can say is that thinking about it as gaining potential energy makes it easier for me. It makes the learning and the mistakes feel less like going down the wrong path in a maze and wasting your time.

This metaphor lets me be patient in my ambition, but it doesn’t tell me to stop wanting what I want. An arrow is meant to fly towards a target, it isn’t meant to stay knocked in the bow and it certainly is not meant to stay in the quiver. By being patient, I can allow the forces that be to imbue me with potential energy that will send me flying toward my goals.

A lot of life seems to be about finding ways to understand those things that are difficult or uncomfortable. Sometimes in understanding things, we can work to change them, but sometimes it just opens up a path to trying to accept them.

I hope that you find some pleasure in the learning and the waiting.

Until next week.

Best,
Zoe

Femme Futures Cooperative

The Femme Futures Cooperative is a community space for young professionals who identify as over-achievers and activists to generate collective success by providing resources and platforms to thrive in challenging workplaces.

By Zoe