Learning patience can not only boost your well-being, but also enhance your self-esteem, hopefulness and keep your blues in check.
In our modern world, where we can have most of your needs and wants fulfilled in an instant, patience is a rare virtue. When we switch on the computer and the webpage is loading a little longer than usual, we ring the broadband provider and complain. When we go to a shop and see a queue of people around the changing room area, rather than wait our turn, we decide to buy our trousers without trying them on, as we know we can return them tomorrow. When we send someone a text and they don’t respond to it quickly enough, we give out to them and load an IM application on their phone, because texting is so ‘yesterday’.
When we are used to getting the things we want fast, is it really any wonder that we get impatient and try to speed up other aspects of our lives, too? If we need to lose weight, we may be tempted to choose fast, yet less effective methods, such as pills or extreme diets, rather than slower, systematic habit changing ways of keeping healthy weight.
If we want to feel a bit of excitement in our monotonous life, we may start to develop messy behaviours, such as excessive shopping, drinking or, even worse, drug-taking. We know it is bad for us long-term, but we are willing to make that sacrifice for a short-term fix. Similarly, if we experience depression, we may want to get rid of it fast, rather than take longer-term, but more effective solutions to feel better. Our impatience with ourselves and the world around us makes us act in ways that may be detrimental to us. Unless we decide to stop it, and practice patience, we may continue feeling unwell.
According to research, patience protects us against experiencing negative emotions and enhances our happiness. When we practice patience we feel more satisfied with our lives, hopeful and enjoy higher levels of self-esteem. Impatience, on the other hand is associated with depression and other health issues, such as headaches, fatigue, etc.
Patience is a newly researched virtue and to date, there is only one empirically tested intervention that aims to help us develop patience. It is a course that teaches participants awareness of their positive and negative emotions, as well as an ability to recognise their triggers and manage life stresses more effectively.
For example, consider a situation that makes you impatient, such as being stuck in traffic or waiting for your child to get ready for school. How do you know you are getting annoyed about it? Does your heart beat a little faster? Does your voice go up a pitch? Does your body get tense? It is important that you notice your physical reactions showing you are becoming impatient. Once you see how your body changes, when you get impatient, you can stop it, rather than get carried away with your emotions.
Also, consider the triggers for your impatience. What is likely to make you lose your head? Does it happen when a driver in front of you cuts you off? Or, do you get impatient when a recurring thought crosses your mind, such as: here we go again? Or maybe you become impatient after calling your child for the fifth time trying to get them out of bed to no avail? Once you are aware of the situations that make you impatient, they can be your warning signs that you are about to lose it.
When you know you are about to lose it, you can do something to prevent this from happening. For instance, when someone cuts you off again on your way to work, you can think to yourself: ah, here is that situation that makes me mad, I’m going to let it go this time. Or if you are about to call your child for the third time to get out of bed, you may say to yourself: well, I need to call them two more times and they should get up, so I’ll be patient and will not get annoyed yet.
Another thing you can do is practice empathy for other people. When a learner driver in front of you makes you feel impatient, stop and consider the situation from their viewpoint. Think how stressed and uncomfortable they must be feeling when driving. You were there, too, many years ago when you were trying to learn. It is a new skill they are trying to learn. I’ll be patient with them.
Remember that patience is a skill that can be learnt and you have many tools at your disposal to practice it. They include deeper breathing; counting to ten, or twenty, or fifty, if necessary, whatever works for you; starting a day with half an hour meditation to calibrate your emotions; exercising in order to regulate your mood, which may prevent you from getting annoyed; or finding short mantras that will help you calm down, when you are about to become impatient. Here are some of my favourite patience-practicing matras: let the baby have its bottle; it’s not worth getting annoyed about; zen; this too shall pass.
Finally, patience is what you do while you are waiting for the uncomfortable situation to end. It is not about trying to speed it up, or influence it in any other way. Every minute of our lives matters, so why waste it by feeling impatient?
Whatever makes you impatient, just let it go. When you find yourself reacting impatiently to something, stop, catch the thought, and remember you have a choice to either enjoy the wait or get annoyed about it. How you spend the time while you’re waiting for things you want to happen, will have a significant impact on your well-being. And remember that after all, patience is a virtue!
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