I have seen many storms in my life. Most storms have caught me by surprise, so I had to learn very quickly to look further and understand that I am not capable of controlling the weather, to exercise the art of patience and to respect the fury of nature.
Paulo Coelho
Patience is the common virtue that we find in every successful person. Success here doesn’t necessarily have to mean fame and money, but any person who is leading their life in peace, happy and content is indeed successful. As children patience didn’t matter much as most of us had parents who were more than eager to provide us with things even before we asked. As we grow older and enter adulthood we understand how important it is to be patient in life.
Life only gets worse further when every minute discomfort makes us upset or angry. Though we realize that life is more about things not going our way and only few happy moments speckled across our life time, Our first reaction is to to get angry or at best upset about such situations. In order to overcome such approach to less desirable situations in life and improve your levels of patience, try and understand below steps;
#1 Why we feel anger and discomfort in the first place.
We humans in the journey of evolution have made ‘comfort’ our priority in everything. From the way we sit while we relieve ourselves to the plushness of the caskets one is buried in! And any deviation from this sense of comfort incites anger in us if we have the luxury of venting it or just upsets us. These feelings carry forward into everything we do effecting our decision making skills, mental and physical health. Discomfort can cause anger to go both ways; towards oneself when we don’t meet our own expectations and towards others. Frequently than not it is usually others who cause us discomfort. In order to improve patience we need to stop and think if they are really to blame, like “How can he do this!?, How can she do that….,These people always do such senseless things!”… so on and so forth.
# 2 Working on attitude towards discomfort
Keep reminding yourself that “Discomfort” and “Intolerable” are completely different. Most of the situations that make us feel like we cannot handle them or like it is the end of the world are just the deviations from our regular normal. But if you dig deeper you will realize that they are not intolerable but simply uncomfortable situations. So the next time you sense yourself loosing patience try and analyze the source of it. More often than not you will realize that you are simply not comfortable with how things are going. This awareness will help you in staying in charge of your patience levels.
#3 Talk to yourself and calm your nerves
Needless to say, you are your own best friend. so counsel yourself whenever you catch yourself loosing patience and getting irritated. Tell to yourself “Wait! I am not actually angry, it is just that I am not comfortable with the way things are happening. There is no point in being angry at someone for that and worse with myself!” or “It is just an uncomfortable situation not an intolerable one! I can keep my peace and be patient and work efficiently in order to make things better.” This kind of self talk will ease your mind and help you better concentrate on your next course of action.
Loosing Patience not only effects you and people around but it kind of trickles down into everything else you do for the rest of your day or some times continue effecting for weeks! Learn and try to implement the above three steps to make your life better one day at a time.
Thanks for your blog, nice to read. Do not stop.