Ten years is a long time to wait for one afternoon.

There’s a story behind that.

This is your daily message from Chad number 1230 to upgrade your mental game today by telling yourself a better story, because the most important story you hear is the story you tell yourself. This message is dedicated to Payton Ryleigh Smith.

Here’s the upgrade:

Waiting feels like doing nothing, but upgraded thinking knows patience is what you do while nothing seems to be happening.

Here’s the story:

In 1938, Károly Takács was a sergeant in the Hungarian army and one of the best pistol shooters in his country. He had his sights set on the 1940 Olympics. Then a defective grenade exploded in his right hand. His shooting hand. It was shattered. Most people would call that the end of a dream. Takács spent a month in the hospital. When he got out, he started teaching himself to shoot left-handed. He practiced in secret, so the next year everyone was shocked when he won the Hungarian national pistol championship.

Now he was ready and his Olympic dream was back on track. But the 1940 Olympics were cancelled, because of WW2. Then the 1944 Olympics were cancelled. Takács kept shooting. In 1948, the Games finally came to London. Takács was 38 years old. Ten years after the grenade.

Before the competition, the world champion and world record holder, Carlos Enrique Díaz Sáenz Valiente of Argentina, asked him why he was there. Takács said, “I’m here to learn.” He won the gold medal. He beat the world record by ten points. On the medal stand, the man who finished second turned to him and said, “You have learned enough.” Four years later in Helsinki, he won gold again, the first person ever to repeat in the rapid-fire pistol.

Takács waited ten years for one afternoon in London. But he didn’t spend those ten years waiting. He spent them practicing. Patience is not simply the ability to wait — it’s how we behave while we’re waiting. Most of us treat waiting like a hallway. Something to get through on the way to the room where life happens. Takács treated the hallway like the room.

The waiting room is the practice room. Whatever you’re waiting on today, the job, the healing, the answer, the turnaround, the clock is going to run either way. The only question is what you’ll be ready to do when it’s your turn. The better story to tell yourself is, “I’m not waiting. I’m working.” Don’t worry about how long the wait is. Worry about what you do during it.

Tell me a story of patience to fromchadsmith@gmail.com. Send someone a text and ask them, “What are you practicing while you wait?” You can get a free copy of my book, The Most Powerful Story in the World, by going to fromchad.gumroad.com. The transcript of this message and hundreds of others are always available at http://www.fromchad.com.