Is patience an act of love?
In our relentless pursuit of efficiency and speed, the art of patience is often lost. Instant gratification is now the norm, and the ability to wait with grace is a skill that seems increasingly rare. How often do you find yourself sighing in frustration at a slow internet connection, drumming your fingers impatiently while waiting in line, or feeling your temperature rise when someone doesn't meet your expectations swiftly enough? Me too! So it’s easy to forget that the value of patience is timeless. It gives us a pathway to a more mindful, compassionate and fulfilling life.
But beyond the age-old adage that "patience is a virtue," how do we cultivate this essential quality? And when was the last time you consciously evaluated your level of patience?
The essence of patience
Patience is more than merely waiting, it's an active engagement with life in the present moment. It's about being conscious for the journey, savouring it, and understanding that things unfold in their own time. The way you handle moments of delay or unpredictability can significantly influence your emotional wellbeing, your relationships, and your achievements.
Being patient has the power to improve our wellbeing by preventing the escalation of frustration into stress, anger, or burnout. It offers us a moment to reflect before we react, potentially saving us from regrettable decisions or words. It enriches our interactions with others, showing us beyond our immediate reactions so we can understand the broader context of our lives.
Everyday tests of patience
Our day is full of opportunities to practice patience, from minor annoyances like a slow computer or getting your jumper stuck in the car door, to more significant challenges such as achieving long term goals. In the workplace, impatience might manifest as frustration with the pace of progress or dissatisfaction with the immediacy of results from efforts in marketing or social media engagement.
Socially, our patience is tested through interactions with others. Waiting for a response, dealing with slow service and navigating queues can all increase our blood pressure in the blink of an eye. Although these moments might seem trivial, they are profound opportunities for growth.
Another lesson from patience is to see how we react when someone is impatient in our company. How do you feel when someone is losing it? I’ve noticed as I become more and more aware of my own impatience, that I feel less tolerant of others when they are impatient. Interesting…. Another opportunity for me to practice 🙂
What does impatience look like?
Sometimes I notice myself getting impatient if a bottle top is stiff and won’t open. Or when I put my pyjama trousers on back to front and have to start over. Those moments of frustration accumulate through the day, the week and over the years we can find ourselves hovering around general impatience of life itself if we’re not careful.
In work I notice an impatience that I’m not further along than I think I should be, or that admin tasks are just taking too long. Expecting them to take half the time.
And what about other people? I can get impatient with friends if they don’t reply to texts in my ‘preferred’ timeframe, or when food hasn’t arrived in a restaurant if I’m hungry. Or maybe there’s a queue for the bathroom and I don’t want to wait. This is all normal life right? Except that it doesn’t have to be like that.
We can learn to interact with life differently. To give a little more space to everything we do and everyone we speak to and trust the natural timeline of life.
What’s the rush anyway?
How do I become more patient?
One of the most profound yet accessible ways that we can be more patient is through mindfulness. It teaches us to fully embrace the present moment so that we have a choice about how we respond to potentially frustrating situations.
If you start to look, you’ll notice loads of opportunities during your day that you can practice patience. For me the first reminder of the day happens when I make my coffee. There’s a flashing light that tells me that the milk steamer is heating up. When it’s ready the light stops flashing. So as I wait it makes me simply BE for just a few seconds. It sets up my whole intention for the day. It’s a brief reminder that it takes a mere moment to pause and wait, but the impact of this micro moment is huge. It tells my whole system that we don’t have to rush or push. Everything will still happen.
This might seem trivial but this short time allows me to be with space and nothingness this just for a moment and feel that it’s okay. To know that it’s okay and to know that I am okay everything is totally fine in the moment that I wait and pause.
The power of mindfulness
Patience serves our wellbeing in numerous ways by preventing frustration becoming stress, anger, burnout and helplessness. It gives us a chance to catch things before they get out of hand. It gives us a moment to think before an argument breaks out and before we say something that we regret.
Patience allows us to give others the space to be themselves, and to make mistakes. This is true love.
Patience shows us that growth is a process, with both successes and setbacks. It’s the difference between giving up and persevering.
It’s crucial for our wellbeing, to feel more self-compassion and resilient. It connects us to our day in a way that allows us to see things we hadn’t seen before and to let things go. To loosen the reigns of control a little.
Without being aware of this element of human nature, and having a mindfulness toolkit to support my experience of impatience, who knows how I’d feel on a daily basis.
What will you take from this reflection on patience?
Ready for positive change?
If you’d like to learn how the art of patience will positively impact your life, book a complimentary discovery call with Kate to sample 1:1 mindfulness coaching.
Kate Greenslade is a certified mindfulness coach. She is a PCC accredited transformational life coach with the ICF (International Coaching Federation). A certified mindfulness MBSR teacher, registered with BAMBA (the British Association of Mindfulness Based Approaches). She holds a First Aid for Mental Health certificate and has completed the following training: Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness, The Neuroscience of Change, The Wisdom of Trauma, Reiki level 1 and Public Speaking training and coaching.