Let me take a guess that most of the time you are a fairly patient person. Except when you are not. If you are anything like me, you may have lots of patience in some situations or with certain people, and far less with others. Sometimes even relatively minor challenges or inconveniences can be triggers. For example, I struggle to be patient when I ask my son for the 3rd time to stop reading and practice his instrument and he ignores me and reads on. Or when all I want is a quick text reply from my wife, and I see the three little dots “…” in the text box as she’s typing, for what feels like forever, in response to what I thought was a “yes or no” question. Somehow my patience vanishes.
Some of us do better at home, but find it infuriating when someone at work gets to the microwave before us and takes 5 minutes to warm their meal. Or when our computer freezes, and we spend 2 hours of our morning with IT.
And then there are those of us who react to traffic, movie or concert line ups or long waits for the ski lift on a beautiful and extremely busy day at the hill.
At our worst, we may lash out at others, making sarcastic comments, honking our car horn or even having a full-blown tantrum! In my house, this is called a Daddy-fit! Fortunately, most of us have a variety of coping strategies that keep our behaviour in check. We bite our tongue, roll our eyes or tap our feet impatiently. While we may be managing our frustration, we can still feel it building up inside, taxing our mental resources.
What’s Happening in Our Brain
Our brains love a sense of certainty and control in our world. In our evolutionary past, this meant we could predict what was about to happen next. If all was running smoothly and predictably, we felt in control. Our vigilant survival brain could settle, feel safe at an unconscious level and shift to a more relaxed mode. When something challenges our certainty or sense of control, even something minor like the various unmet expectations we encounter in our day, we feel that sense of unease and wanting to bring certainty and control back as quickly as possible.
This is often the root of our impatience. Our mind has a sense of how things should unfold. When that plan meets a different reality, it can feel like the world is getting in our way. This is doubly so in a world where our technology gives us a heightened sense of speed and control beyond anything we ever knew in the past. The trouble with our unconscious reaction to a world getting in our way is that it is leads to judgement, putting our brain in a low-level reactive (fight or flight) state. In this state, it is very difficult to genuinely connect with others, listen, problem solve, be creative, etc. It is also difficult to be genuinely happy.
The more self-awareness we have, the better we get at noticing our thinking in real time and the better we get at watching our reactivity unfold. We notice we are feeling impatient and moving to judgment and we actively engage strategies to manage it. We try to look at other people’s perspectives, see a bigger picture or remind ourselves that sometimes this is how it goes.
If all of our basic systems are running well (i.e. we aren’t tired, hungry, late, or overwhelmed) we can maintain a surprisingly even keel through these unmet expectations. At our very best, we smile, let go of any angst we could harbour in a lesser moment, and settle into the experience for what it is.
Tools to Help You Be More Patient
1. Manage Your Stress. One of the best tools we have is learning to manage our stress. I like to think of stress as being like freeboard on a boat. If we are taking care of ourselves (sleep, healthy food, movement, connections and time to genuinely recharge) we have far more freeboard to absorb “waves” when they show up. When we are run down and overwhelmed, we are cruising with very little freeboard and the slightest wave might swamp the boat.
2. Learning to Breathe and Pause. One of the easiest ways to manage stress and keep our brain in an open and patient mode is simply pausing to breathe more fully and with awareness. It is like a circuit interrupt for a busy brain. This is the space you will need to catch your impatient and judging thoughts and give you time to choose differently.
3. Practice Gratitude. Gratitude is an excellent practice no matter what the situation. It shifts our brain away from the “me” centre and allows us to see things on a grander scale and connect to the people in it. When you spend 2 hours with IT getting your frozen computer running, can you be grateful that you have an expert at hand who can solve the problem for you?
4. Practice Compassion. Similar to gratitude, compassion, empathy and kindness shift our brain away from being all about “me”. If I can find compassion for my son who is having a hard time putting down his engaging book to do something he doesn’t want to do, I’m far more open and patient in my approach.
5. Quit Taking it Personally. Much of our impatience lies in a sense that the world is getting in our way. People, traffic, technology, etc. are somehow blocking us from what we want. Challenging our sense of control. So, here’s the shift – quit taking it so personally! It’s not about you. Much of the time it is just a chaotic world full of imperfect people getting on the best they can.
At the end of the day, this takes practice. As Donald Hebb nicely quipped “neurons that fire together, wire together”. As we practice taking things less personally, finding gratitude, and being more compassionate – we get better at doing this. All of which makes patience more available, particularly when we need it most.
Conclusion
Despite our best wishes, the world will continue to unfold in ways that are not to our liking. As we accept this, we can begin to practice more patience. Not through gritted teeth, but with genuine ease, acceptance and openness. Perhaps with some kindness and compassion thrown in for good measure. Now you are moving through your world with more spaciousness and grace, no matter what is happening around you. As each of us finds a little more patience, we inspire others to do the same.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. Please feel free to share your comments.
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