View Full Version : Patience is a Virtue
as I keep reminding myself, but damn if it isn't hard. How do you develop patience in a hurry up culture?
Breathing, pay attention to it for just a few... I tell myself that I have 30 seconds to slow down, and then can hurry up again if I want to. My hurry is usually driven by anxiety.
I am able to be a lot more patient when I consciously limit my time commitments. Time for me = patience for everything and everyone else.
I think anxiety does play a part with me too - the fear that I will run out of time to accomplish the changes I want and be stuck in a rut forever.
How do you develop patience in a hurry up culture?
The reason redfox's advice is sound is that this breathing brings us back into the present moment.
If we pay attention we will discover that when we feel pressed/impatient we are 'in the head' - thinking of this or that
(or as you admit - perhaps feeling anxious). When our attention is on thinking then we're not here and now.
Experiment and discover this for yrself ... use the breathing redfox recommended.
- the fear that I will run out of time to accomplish the changes I want and be stuck in a rut forever.
That is a core construct of our hurry up culture. And that is what cripples us in our attempts to accomplish change.
For me, I have to practise detaching (in a zen sense, not the common culture sense) from the common culture. As I do that, I am better able to detach from the need of having deadlines for when I must finish my accomplishments. It will take as long as it takes. The result looks like something we tend to call patience.
I tried Buddhist meditation ... but I was too impatient to do it :) Could only do it at the temple - got too distracted at home. Maybe I should try it again.
Sure try again! It took my like a decade to really be able to do it consistently solo. I could manage at home if everything was right, then I had kids and it was all wonky. If I haven't sat in awhile it gets hard again but easier to re-start each time.
I work in a very interruptable job. I am on call all afternoon for an afterschool care program that covers 4 schools. So I am either at a site or getting a call or both. With the children I have developed ways to stop some interruptions and get back to the moment. One classic way for me is to say "I am in a bubble with your teacher, please see another teacher until we are done'. Okay sounds silly when you are with grownups but I have had so many people comment on how well it works (key is respectful tone of voice and getting back to the child). After I started really developing that I noticed that I was able to translate that to other areas and become more mindful in general.
This does relate to what you are saying, I find that adults are even harder to do this with. When I have pushes and pulls and interruptions it is much harder to keep a mindful nature (to me mindful means a type of patience that is letting each thing has its time, and not falling into avoidance either). So one thing that drives my impatience is a hugely overrated idea of what I could or should have done or be doing. I get so into the hurry up because I need to make up, and when I examine the past I often find I didn;t meet my goals for many valid reasons.
Okay take what applies and leave the rest
I'll take this part "So one thing that drives my impatience is a hugely overrated idea of what I could or should have done or be doing". Thank you - it's helpful.
Even though we are in a hurry-up culture, I have found that life presents us MANY opportunities to practice developing our patience on a daily basis. Traffic lights, customer "service" wrangling, waiting for things and people to arrive, waiting for promises to be kept by those near to and far from us, etc. Maintaining mindfulness and taking opportunities to practice patience on the fly, combined with humility about our own goals and desires, can help you develop it. Consciously remembering, at the end of the day for example, instances in which you chose to be patient rather than impatient, will focus your mind on developing that habit even further.
You can choose to forego the hurry-up in many ways. On the days when I feel a desperate need to slow down, I set my email to auto-check only twice a day, turn off my cell phone, stay away from texting, TV and radio stay OFF all day, stop multitasking every minute..... And you know what? I dont' die on those days, my business doesn't fail, and everything necessary gets done. We are fed and clothed and hydrated and laughing. I'm still a good person even without my superwoman cloak. And I feel calmer, quieter, wiser, and more compassionate. If you haven't taken a day like that in a while, maybe it would be a worthwhile experiment.
Puglogic, my days are like that at home, thought not at work. Just recently got a cell phone and I did NOT give the number to anyone at work :)
I don't see that there really is patience or impatience.
Impatience is a form of fear as was eluded to earlier. Patience or patient is what someone who is impatient calls someone else who's natural way of being is balanced. In other words, patience is effortless. When one realizes that there is only now how could one be impatient? The Buddha once said something like, 'the trouble with you is that you think you have time'. If you have to try to be patient you're really just suppressing fear. Embrace your impatience. It is there to teach you. Open up to the opportunity...or don't. Maybe it's just not "time".
My son just said, he thinks I "pretty much wrapped it up there"
After being an impatient person myself for a long time I came to realize that impatience was an expression of my overblown sense of self-importance and my personal Do List. Me, me, me, I said to myself, I've got to get there on time or finish such-and-such this weekend. It had to do with my own comfort and desires when it came right down to it. Even the anxiety when I was really late to work had to do with my own comfort and needs, my desire to not receive a reprimand or even a dirty look. So, how important is that in the greater scheme of things? Not very at all. And it's embarrassingly selfish.
Lest anyone think I'm a saint, I still get outraged at drivers who risk other people's lives so they can get to work fifteen seconds earlier. In fact, I take great pleasure in inching past them on the highway as they sit stuck in traffic with everyone else. :~)
loosechickens
5-6-11, 2:06pm
Patience came and landed on my shoulder when I began to learn to let go of having expectations. It isn't really the situations that make us feel impatient. It's our expectations about how we THINK the situation should be. Once we really grasp that the situation is what it is, no matter what we think, and our job is to deal with that reality, it gets a lot easier.
I still find myself impatient sometimes, and all I have to do is stop a moment, look around, locate and notice, and sure enough, I'll find some unmet expectation tripping me up.
Once I begin to perceive things as they are, patience simply arrives, without fanfare. Ah, but the trick is to get it to stay........
Patience came and landed on my shoulder when I began to learn to let go of having expectations. It isn't really the situations that make us feel impatient. It's our expectations about how we THINK the situation should be. Once we really grasp that the situation is what it is, no matter what we think, and our job is to deal with that reality, it gets a lot easier.
I still find myself impatient sometimes, and all I have to do is stop a moment, look around, locate and notice, and sure enough, I'll find some unmet expectation tripping me up.
Once I begin to perceive things as they are, patience simply arrives, without fanfare. Ah, but the trick is to get it to stay........
Loosie - :laff: I don't think it will ever stay. I sometimes think it is external things that change stuff - and it does - and I often think it is just me - and it often is - but in reality very little changes in the whole scheme of things.
Patience is something that is learned and it takes a very long time unless you are a zombie! :moon:
Peace
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