I don’t know if anyone else does this, but almost every Christmas I buy myself a gift. It’s usually something I wouldn’t want others to go out of their way or price range to buy for me. It’s a holiday treat I treat myself to.

There is another gift I’ve come by in recent years and as the saying goes, “if I had known about this years ago, I would have made much more progress than I have.”

This gift is one you also give to yourself. It pays dividends right away, and it’s only a few thoughts away.

The gift is “waiting.”

I learned to wait late in life and it pays off every time.

Sidebar: Men have been conditioned to have an answer at the ready immediately when asked a question. Culturally, men are expected to know and know now! Most often we don’t know, but we answer anyway because to do otherwise makes us look unknowing in the asker’s eyes. It’s also why most stutterers are men. They often had an impatient parent who demanded an answer well before they were ready to give it. “Out with it, out with it” may have been the mantra shouted at them while they were hesitating. They started to haltingly speak even though they didn’t know and the cat nibbled on their stuttering tongue.

I was talking to my friend Hali the other day and she was referring to someone who claimed to have “writer’s block.” I said, “writer’s block” is nothing more than a conversation in your head. It’s talking to yourself about not having an idea of what to write. That internal chat often turns into paralyzing fear. The comedian Sarah Cooper recently tweeted this: “Today I’m doing what I like to call “circulatory writing” which is where you don’t write at all but you think about writing and then you beat yourself up for not writing and then you start to write but you can’t write and it’s torture.”

Waiting is the remedy for writer’s block or any other answer you’re looking for. When you get to a sticking point, just put on the brakes and wait for traffic to start moving again. They key is to not rant internally or exrternally while you’re waiting. The answer is there, it just needs a moment of silence or two to come through.

Train yourself to wait. Some might say, “Have patience,” but that phrase has a ton of parental baggage attached to it and your mind doesn’t respond well to that directive. Waiting is an actual action you take, while patience is a mental construct that doesn’t bring you a lot of luck.

Start waiting with little things at first. For example, if you’re doing a crossword puzzle or Sudoku and you run up against a wall, resist the temptation to bang your head against it and give your mind a breather instead. It’s interesting how that quiet space you create fills up with the answers when you just wait.

It’s a one-size-fits-all present and it’s free. Take the time to practice waiting and you’ll have the perfect gift under your tree.

All the best,

John

Listen to the recorded version.

Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

Dear Santa,

My list is posted early this year in case you need extra delivery time because of the elves having to social distance.

As always, I’ll keep my list short and realize you may not be able to fulfill all my requests.

I don’t think my perennial request will ever come true: to have all broadcasters pronounce the word “forward” correctly. I’ve tried to alert some of them by text, and illustrated my request in a story. I suggested that if they were going to vote for Beaver Cleaver’s father in an election, they would be “FOR WARD.” If they were against him, he would be known as “FOE WARD.” I would consider this a Christmas Miracle if it ever happens, but quoting my sainted mother, “Don’t hold your hand on your ass waiting.”

Here’s something I really don’t want: to ever meet anyone who describes themselves on their dating profile as “Angel Eyes.”

Now for my requests:

* Less political posts on Facebook.

* More dog videos on YouTube.

* Less plastic gloves thrown on the ground in supermarket parking lots.

* Gift certificates for Sweetwater or Amazon

And finally, another broadcast request: Can you have TV interviewers stop saying “we’ll have to leave it there” when wrapping up an interview? They could just as easily say, “I want to thank our guest(s) for coming on today, and coming up next, a gerbil salesman tells us why he wants them stopped being called ‘desert rats’.”

I hope you and Mrs. Claus have a healthy and stress-free holiday and that Rudolph’s nose doesn’t turn blue.

Love,

LJ (Little Johnnie)