Patience, whether about achieving goals or anything else, is not a popular virtue in the modern world. How valuable is patience today?

A young woman in the UK has just been jailed for 20 years. She wanted to make three million pounds quickly by killing rich people.

As part of her plan, she conducted a trial murder by knifing a kindly neighbour 14 times. I am surprised that she had enough patience to conduct a test murder before moving on to her main targets.

A less exceptional example of impatience can be found in the world of cosmetic surgery where people are ready to suffer the surgeon's knife to lose fat quickly. They are not prepared for the long haul of eating less and exercising more.

On the internet you are promised that you can learn how to write a book in fourteen days or even seven days. The question of whether such a book would be worth reading is not closely analysed.

However, I think there is a place for such promises because they inspire people to get started and write something. Without such inspiration, many potential authors will never write anything. The writing can always be improved later on.

Some people wait patiently all their lives to achieve a goal and then die before they start! Maybe the idea of patience has been misunderstood in the modern world.

For example, patience has been described as the ability to "sit back and wait for an expected outcome without experiencing anxiety, tension, or frustration."

This description could describe someone's experience on a toilet seat! There is no need to sit back and do nothing whether one is in a lavatory or somewhere else. However, action without anxiety, tension and frustration can only be a good thing.

One can work hard and with urgency on any project and still be so detached from the results that anxiety, tension and frustration are avoided.

Patience, then, does not mean sitting around and waiting for good things to happen; it means working hard but calmly and believing that results will eventually show up.

I just came across this quote which fits the above point exactly:

"The way to manifest (create the reality you want) effectively is to use patience and consistent action at the same time."

Incidentally, before we leave the topic of toilets or washrooms, the average time spent on the toilet over a life time is three years. A lot of reading can be done over three years - the same length of time it takes to achieve a university degree!

Geoff Thompson, the martial arts expert and author, wrote his first book on toilet paper in the washroom at the factory where he worked! He is now a successful author of books, plays and films.

Moving on from the fascinating topic of toilet action, my Taekwondo Instructor once offered a black belt to anyone who asked for it.

No one asked.

They realized the lesson he was trying to teach. If you do not have the patience to train step by step for your black belt over a period of years, you do not deserve to have a black belt and are unlikely to have developed the skills worthy of such an honour.

Most martial arts help their students to reach black belt by allowing them to achieve step by step colour belt grades which break up the goal of achieving black belt into smaller stages. Most people can muster up enough patience to aim for their next belt over a period of two or three months.

Mercifully, the need for patience about goals is also limited in other ways. We do not have to rely patiently on other people to achieve our goals for us. A huge benefit in life is that we can usually make things happen ourselves. We do not have to wait for other people to take action on our behalf. You can train as hard as you like on your own to achieve your black belt. You do not have to rely on a friend to train with you.

We have the wonderful gift of being able to take as much action as we wish in pursuit of our own goals. Nor do we have to depend on certificates to qualify us to achieve our goals. Earl Nightingale said that one hour per day of study could put you at the top of your field within three years

When I watch the current world football cup competition, I have to remind myself that there is nothing I can do to win a match. I did buy English flags for my car but that was the extent of what I could achieve without moving to Germany and buying a ticket!

However, I can support my own goal achieving attempts one hundred per cent. We can work patiently in a stress free way on our own dreams and goals. We don't have to wait impatiently for others to work for us.

We can be urgent in our efforts and actions but patient about results.

Results take time. A tree does not grow overnight though a weed might well do so! Patience is needed especially when results seem like they will never come.

When we become impatient for results, we make mistakes. A few years ago, I was inspired by a seminar to make money quickly through buying shares. I eventually lost