The Match Newsletter: A small spark each week to help you keep your fire lit.

Word: Patience

Sentence:

Patience is the pause that turns reaction into wisdom.

Passage:

When I was a kid, my grandmother loved to tease me with an old line: “Patience is a virtue found seldom in a woman and never in a man.” I did not get it then. I do now. The work that lasts is the work that takes time. Early in my career I wanted to be everywhere, making every decision, proving my worth minute by minute. It looked like hustle; it felt like leadership. It was really impatience dressed up as urgency.

My first year as principal, a veteran clerk pulled me into a side office. She had seen the school’s glory days and the hard years that followed. “Slow down,” she told me. “Be patient with people.” It was not a critique of my commitment. It was an invitation to lead differently.

I think about that every time my instinct is to move fast. Like the day a student tried to bring a plumber’s pipe wrench to school. My first questions were, “Who is she going to hit?” and “How long should the suspension be?” Then something in me said, “Pause. Ask. Listen.” She had been chased to school the day before by people in the neighborhood and grabbed the wrench for protection. We called her caregiver, kept her in class, and later our engineer showed her how that tool keeps a building running. Patience did not excuse the choice. It surfaced the whole story and a better response.

Schools offer a hundred moments a day where patience changes the outcome: a classroom that looks out of control, a teacher not greeting their students as they enter the room, or two adults disagreeing too loudly. You can react to the first story your mind writes, or you can pause, collect a little more truth, and then move. Patience lives between chaos and order. The longer we can stay present in the middle, without rushing to fix or flee, the more durable our decisions become.

Most of us were raised inside a culture or during a time of quick corrections. As kids, the feedback came fast: “wrong,” “stop,” “do not,” and the adults around us modeled reaction over reflection. It is no surprise we carry that forward with our own children, students, and partners. Patience pulls us back to the core, care and concern, so we do not let chaos or our own urgency do the talking.

Patience: Pause, ask. Then act.

Your Turn:

What story did you write in your head today that you want to fact check tomorrow?

Tell me how this shows up in your leadership—I’m here for the conversation.

Keep living with passion and purpose!