There is a delusion the world needs to function. The delusion that we are in control — that we make things happen.
I call it a delusion because we don't make things happen. But I also think it might be one of the most necessary untruths we carry. I'll come back to that.
Consider what the successful tend to say. Anyone who has built something the world recognises — financially, athletically, professionally, almost always points at the same thing. Not genius. Not some secret advantage. Consistency. Showing up, over and over, for a long time.
We hear it so often we stop listening. But I think it's worth asking: why is that the thing they say? Why does that word — consistency — keep coming back up?
I think it's because they are pointing at something true that they don't quite have the language for.
Every outcome has a gestation period. That, I think, is the heart of it.
Take a seed. When we plant it, we water it, manage the soil, ensure the conditions are right. But the process by which that seed becomes a tree — we don't control that. It's already been written. Encoded in the seed itself is the full specification: how long it will take, what it needs, how much water, and what kind of ground. We didn't write that specification. We can't renegotiate it. And we cannot make that tree arrive any sooner than it's going to.
If it takes ten years, it takes ten years.
What we can do — what we must do — is stay in it. Meet the requirements. Be present when the thing finally emerges. That's what the "successful" are actually describing when they talk about consistency. Not a cause. A precondition. We have to remain long enough, and rightly enough, for something that was always going to happen to happen through us.
We are not the cause of the outcome. We are the condition under which it can appear.
Now here's where I think we get it wrong. We treat persistence as though it's sufficient on its own — as though the formula is simply: keep going long enough and the results will come. But for everyone who persisted and broke through, there's someone else who persisted just as long and got nothing. What do we say about them?
Persistence is necessary. But it isn't sufficient.
Because encoded in the seed is also the quality of input it requires. A seed that needs two buckets of water will not grow if you give it one. That's not a patience problem. That's an insufficiency problem. Duration matters. Quality matters. The right input, at the right level, sustained for the right amount of time — that's what satisfies the specification. Fall short on any one of those and the outcome simply doesn't emerge. Not because you weren't persistent. Because you didn't meet what was always required.
The standard was never ours to set. Only ours to meet.
And here is where I have to introduce the complication — because this idea has a dangerous edge.
My wife said something whiles were discussing this idea: the delusion that we have control is the delusion the world needs to keep going. It's so good, I wish I can take credit for it.
The truth is, some of the people who achieve the most extraordinary things are entirely unbothered by this kind of thinking. They don't philosophise about participation and emergence. They just put their head down and go. Again and again. And in that relentless, almost unsophisticated forward motion, they accidentally satisfy every condition the outcome requires — including the duration.
If we genuinely dismantled this belief for most people — if we sat them down and helped them truly understand that they don't make anything happen — I don't think we'd get liberated, patient participants. I think we'd get apathy. A sophisticated-sounding paralysis. For a lot of people, this delusion is the engine. Without it, the motion stops.
So I want to be careful about what I'm saying and what I'm not.
I'm not saying: relax, wait, let things emerge in their own time. The seed refutes that — the seed that dies without water, that suffocates in the wrong soil. Passive participation isn't participation.
What I'm saying is this: this understanding is only useful to the person it frees. If it releases you from the crushing pressure of trying to manufacture results faster than reality permits — good. That's the point. But the moment it becomes a reason to disengage, the delusion would honestly have served you better.
So where does that leave us?
Somewhere between the person who believes they're making everything happen and the person who has surrendered to the process entirely. Acting fully. Meeting the specification. And releasing the grip on the timeline.
Whether we're building a business, raising a family, sustaining a marriage, or becoming exceptional at something — the gestation period doesn't care about our ambition. It only asks whether we can stay long enough, and give enough of the right things, for the outcome to emerge.
We don't make anything happen. We participate in what is already becoming. And the whole art of it is learning to do that — fully, consistently, without quitting — for as long as it takes.