So the other night, I sat down to watch a show, one I've been looking forward to. I got my blanket, a little bowl of popcorn, I got comfortable, and then I hit play, and the opening credits started. And I thought, I don't have time for this nonsense, and I fast forwarded through the credits. 63 seconds, that's how long the credits were, and I couldn't sit through them. When did I become someone who cannot wait 63 seconds? And it's not just me, you might be getting more impatient too. In 2004, the average time people could stare at a single screen before switching to something else was two and a half minutes. Now, it's 47 seconds. And it's not just screens, it's everything. We start a diet and we quit after two weeks because the scale hasn't moved. We put money into savings and pull it out again because the goal feels too far. We start learning something new, and it takes a long time, so we give up. Patient people have fewer negative emotions.Impatient people report better sleep because the impatience follows you to bed. It makes sleep feel like one more thing that can't happen fast enough. So tonight, we're going to do something about that. Not by telling you to be more patient, because that's about as useful as telling you to be taller, but by taking your mind somewhere slow. We're going to put down some of the things you've been carrying, the things you've been so impatient about, and we're going to help you sleep. But first, make sure that you are somewhere safe to fall asleep. This episode uses hypnotherapy techniques designed to guide you into deep sleep. So you want to be in bed and not anywhere you need to stay alert. And if this show has been helping you sleep, please take a moment to leave a review or a rating.I don't have a marketing department. It's just me in a very, very small room. It's actually weirdly cozy in here. So if you've got a minute, well, 47 seconds should do. I'd really appreciate it. And now, let's get you settled. Take a moment to arrange everything in your bed the way you like it. There's no rush. Take your time. And when you're ready, I'd like you to think about how impatience feels in your body. You know this feeling. It's like being stuck behind someone on a narrow pavement. They're walking slowly. And there's no room to pass. And your whole body wants to move faster. Your chest tightens. Your jaw sets. But you're trapped at third pace. Impatience is not a comfortable feeling. Your body doesn't enjoy it. So let's find out where it's living in you right now. And start letting that tension go. Let's take a deep breath in together. Just a natural, comfortable breath in. And then breathe out. And if possible, make it longer than your inhale. Breathe in again. Slowly. And out. Long and slow. And then just let your breathing settle into its own rhythm. And as you lay here, I'd like you to imagine a warmth, starting at the soles of your feet. The kind you feel when you step onto sun-warmed stone on a summer afternoon. It spreads across the bottoms of your feet, into your arches, around your ankles, and wherever it reaches. The muscles there soften and let go. Feel it moving up through your calves. They're loosening now, unwinding. The warmth rises into your thighs, into your hips. Your hips are sinking deeper into the mattress. Your legs feel twice as heavy as they did a moment ago. The warmth moves through your stomach. Your abdomen. Anxiety sits in your stomach. An impatience sits there. Feel the warmth reaching into that space. Your breathing deepens as your belly relaxes. The warmth continues upward through your chest, loosening the tightness around your ribs. Your shoulders are dropping now, releasing everything they've been carrying. The warmth flows down your arms. Through your elbows. Your wrists. All the way into your fingers. The warmth rises into your neck. Those muscles that hold up your head all day. The warmth moves into your jaw. Into your cheeks. Your temples. Your forehead. And your eyelids are heavy. Everything is heavy. And now, I'd like you to focus completely on the sound of my voice. If other sounds drift in from somewhere, that's fine. And if a thought pops up, a worry, something you forgot to do, just let it float by. What we're going to do together now is a visualization. And know that your subconscious mind is listening right now. Even more closely than your conscious mind. And it is remarkably open to suggestion in this state. So stay with me. Follow my voice. You put your name on the waiting list three years ago. And every spring you thought about it. You wondered where you were on the list. And then one Tuesday in January, your phone rang. A voice told you that a community garden plot had opened up. Number 14. You drove over that same afternoon just to see it. It was January. The plots were rectangles of dark soil and pale flattened stems from last year's growth. Plot 14 was in the second row. About 10 feet by 12 feet. Someone had left behind a few broken terracotta pots in the corner. And a rusted tomato cage. But the soil looked dark. And rich. And full of possibility. You started the seeds at home in late February. You cleared a space by the kitchen window. The one that gets the best morning light. And you had everything out. A stack of empty egg cartons you'd been saving. A bag of seed starting mix. A spray bottle with water. And the seeds. You filled the pots with the mix. Pressing it down lightly with your fingers. Not too firm. Just enough to give the seeds something to grip. You open the first packet. Rosemary. Tiny seeds. Dark and round. Like grains of coarse pepper. You place two or three in each egg cup. Pressing them just barely into the surface. Rosemary doesn't want to be buried. It wants light to germinate. You misted the surface with the spray bottle. And moved on. The second packet. Carrots. These seeds were even smaller. Pale and brown. You sprinkled them across the surface of their pots. And covered them with the thinnest layer of mix. Just a whisper of soil. The third packet. Sweet peas. Larger. Round with a hard shell. You'd soak them overnight in a cup of water to soften the outer coat. You pressed each one into its pot. About one inch deep. The fourth packet. Tomatoes. Small, flat seeds. Yellow. And slightly fuzzy. You place two in each pot. Covering them lightly. And misting them. And the fifth packet. Evening primrose. Tiny. Dark. Almost like grains of sand. And then you covered the whole tray loosely with plastic. And you set it on the counter by the window. Where the morning sun would find it. For the next few weeks, your kitchen smelled faintly of damp earth. You checked the tray every morning. Misted when the surface looked dry. And you waited. You'd lift the plastic wrap and look. And see only dark soil. Unchanged. You knew things were happening underneath. That the seeds were swelling and splitting. And sending out the first roots. But you couldn't see any of it. And then one morning. There it was. A tiny green arch. Barely a centimeter tall. Pushing up through the soil in one of the tomato pots. Just one. The seed pot still clinging to the top. Like a little hat. Over the next few days. More appeared. First the tomatoes. Then the sweet peas pushing up. Then a few rosemary sprouts. The carrots came last. Feathery. And delicate. The evening primrose sent up small, oval leaves. The day you finally brought them to the garden. Was a Saturday. In late April. You carried them in a cardboard box. On the passenger seat of your car. The plots on either side of yours were already showing life. Someone had neat rows of lettuce coming in. An older man, two plots down, was kneeling in the dirt. Working compost into his soil with a hand fork. He looked up when you passed. And nodded. The soil was cool under your knees. You could smell it. Part mineral. Part something green. And awake. You took a trowel and began to dig the first hole. The rosemary went in first. Such a small plant. Barely four inches tall. With those narrow, dark, green leaves. You eased it out of its pot. And set it into its hole. Press the soil around it. You gave it water. And you thought about what rosemary represents. Financial stability. Security. Because rosemary is slow. Weeks go by. And it looks the same. Or close enough that you can't tell the difference. And this is where the frustration lives. Isn't it? You look at your savings. And it feels like nothing. You make a budget. And the numbers barely move. You put money aside. And then something happens. And you're back to where you started. And it's tempting to stop trying. To spend the money now. Because saving feels pointless. But rosemary, once it's established. Once those slow roots have found their way. Deep into the soil. Is one of the hardiest plants you can grow. It just keeps growing. Season after season. Getting stronger. Until one day you realize it's become this substantial. Fragrant. Permanent thing in your garden. And you can't quite remember. When it stopped being small. And that's how financial stability works. Not in one dramatic moment. But in the accumulation of small. Patient decisions that don't feel like they matter. Until the day you realize they added up into something solid. You gave the rosemary one more drink of water. And you moved on. The carrots went in next. You know what's remarkable about carrots? Everything that matters. Happens where you can't see it. The green tops will come up. But the actual carrot. The thing you're growing is beneath the surface. You have to trust that it's down there. You can't check. And this is your health. The weight you want to lose, the fitness you want to build, the habits you're trying to change. You step on the scale and nothing has moved or it's moved in the wrong direction. You eat well for a week and your clothes are the same. You exercise and feel no different and the temptation is to pull up the carrot, to tell yourself it's not working and try something else or try nothing at all but underneath, out of sight. Your body is making changes you can't measure on a scale. Your blood pressure is adjusting. Your sleep is improving. The carrot is growing. You just can't see it yet and the people who end up with the most beautiful carrots are the ones who left them in the ground long enough and you move on. The sweet peas went in along the back edge of the plot near the small wooden trellis you'd brought from home. Even in their pots, the tendrils have been reaching out, curling around anything they could find. You planted them at the base of the trellis and you could almost feel their relief and finally having room to grow. Sweet peas are climbers. They reach upward but need something to hold on to and they need the right conditions. Warmth but not too much heat. Water but not too much water. Support but not so much that they never learn to grip themselves. And this is how relationships work. You can't force a relationship to grow faster. You can't demand friendship deepens or partnership strengthens just because you're ready for it. And your impatience, it says, if it were meant to be, it would be easier. If this person really cared, you'd feel it by now. Maybe it's time to give up. But sweet peas don't climb in a straight line. They reach out. They miss. They curl back on themselves. They try again. The tendrils go in directions that seem pointless. But each one is the plant searching for something to hold on to. And when it finally finds it, the growth that follows is extraordinary. But you have to let it find its own way up the trellis. You press the soil around the base of each sweet pea and you move on. The tomatoes went in the center of the plot where they'd get the most sun. You planted them deep, deeper than you'd think, burying part of the stem because tomatoes will grow roots from the buried stem and become stronger. Everyone grows tomatoes. And everyone who grows tomatoes knows the particular impatience of waiting for them to ripen. Because here's what happens. The plant grows. It gets tall. Healthy. It flowers. Small yellow flowers that become small green fruits and then those green tomatoes just sit there for weeks. Stubbornly unripe. You check them every day. Nothing. Still green. Still not ready. Maybe this is like your work. your career, or the project you've been building, the creative thing you're trying to make, the skill you're trying to develop. You've done everything right, and it feels sometimes like nothing is happening. Other people's tomatoes seem to be ripening faster, their gardens are overflowing, and yours just sits there. And the voice of impatience says, maybe this was never going to work. But the only way to get a tomato that's worth eating is to leave it on the vine until it's ready. Your work is ripening. It doesn't feel like it, but it is. And the day the first tomato turned red, and it will, you'll forget how long it took. You'll just be standing there in the garden, holding something perfect in your hand. And it will have been worth every day of waiting. You gave the tomatoes a long, deep drink of water, and you moved on to the last plant, the evening primrose. You planted it in the corner of the plot, where it would get afternoon sun. You pressed the small plant into the soil, and watered it, and wondered if you were wasting the space. But here's what you've learned about evening primrose. It blooms at dusk. When every other flower in the garden has closed up for the night, when the bees have gone home, and the light is fading, the evening primrose opens. It glows faintly in the dark, and it attracts moths instead of bees, creatures of the night, quiet pollinators, working while everyone sleeps. And it won't bloom in its first year. Blooms come the following summer. You have to carry your patience through an entire season, and this is sleep. Sleep is not something you can demand from yourself. You know this. You've laid here and clenched your fists and willed yourself unconscious, and it has never worked, because sleep is like the evening primrose. It only opens when the conditions are right, when the light fades, and the effort stops. And improving your sleep is a slow process. It doesn't happen because you listened to one episode, or tried one technique, or had one good night. It happens gradually, through better habits built over weeks and months, through learning to quiet the mind, through practicing patience with yourself on the nights that nothing works, by choosing rest, even when rest feels impossible. And tonight, here in the dark, you don't need to make it happen. You just need to stop trying to force it. Let the evening come. Let the light fade. You're back in the garden now, but it's much later, late summer. In your plot, plot 14, it looks nothing like it did in April. The rosemary has thickened. When you brush your hand across it, the scent rises up and fills the air around you. The carrot tops are a soft forest of green, swaying slightly in the evening breeze. You won't pull them yet, not for a few more weeks, but you know they're down there, deep and orange and growing sweeter. Each day, the sweet peas have found the trellis. They've climbed it completely, winding and reaching and covering the wooden frame in a cascade of pink and purple and white. They did it their own way, in their own time. The tomatoes are red, so red, heavy on the vine, pulling the branches down with their weight. You pick one. It's warm from the sun. You eat it. Standing between the rows. And in the corner, the evening primrose. Its leaves are full and green, but there are no flowers. Not yet.That's next year. Everything grew. Everything you planted, everything you tended, everything you were patient with. Not as fast as you wanted, but it grew. And the things you were most impatient about turned out to be the things that needed the most time. And the waiting wasn't wasted time. The waiting was the growing. Now, let yourself drift back into your bed, to this room, to this darkness, and the warmth and the weight of your body against the wall. The mattress. You've been tending things in your life, in your body, in your relationships. You've been doing the work, and it's tempting to stand over all of it and demand results. But tonight, just for now, set it all down. The financial worry, any frustration with your body, the relationship you may be trying to build, the project you're waiting to ripen. Set them down, the way you set those seedlings into the soil. And sleep. You don't need to make sleep happen. You've already done everything you need to do. You're here. Your body is heavy and warm. Your breathing is slow. The garden is quiet now. And in the corner of your plot, something is beginning to stir. The evening primrose opens its petals in the half-light. It simply unfurls, the way sleep unfurls, when you finally stop reaching for it. Soft, yellow petals opening in the dusk. Just the quiet work of a flower. Doing what it was always going to do. In its own time. In the dark. When the world is still. Your body is so heavy now. Everything in the garden is resting. You have planted everything you need to plant. You have tended everything that needed tending. The rest is not up to you. The rest belongs to time. To patience. To the slow, sure rhythm of things growing in the dark. Let go now. Let the garden hold what you've been carrying. Sleep is here. It's been here all along. It was just waiting for you to stop reaching.