PATIENCE – What Is Patience, And How To Effectively Improve Your Patience Life Skill

This article deals with the topic area, what is Patience, and how to effectively improve your patience life skill.

Featured Image Courtesy of: Mona Hassan Abo-Abda

The Difference Between Waiting And Patience

Patience is the ability to maintain good attitude and character, through a period of time. Where as, waiting is simply a pause in time without doing what one needs to be doing, The definition of waiting is detached from attitude or character.

The Difference Between Conscious And Sub-Conscious Patience

It is indeed true that patience is a virtue. When you deploy it naturally, it comes from who you are as a person, and your vested interest in the person or situation at hand. Therefore, the skills to be patient in the moment, are naturally held by yourself, developed over time. So the important point here that we need to reiterate is that all of this comes from the sub-conscious mind. You might not make a deliberate statement in your mind, ‘I must stay calm and patient,’ but you do it all the same. So this cones from natural patience.

However continued deployment of patience by yourself, during the moment, when perhaps patience is running out, or you are not feeling patient, but you know that you must be, comes from is a very very conscious position indeed.

When Time Invested In Patience Pays Back In Spades On A Personal Level

Imagine that that your are teaching your child to rise a bike without stabilisers, it’s late, you are tired and are starting to get it right. While your patience is running out, a bit more time in the patience zone will pay off big time. It is the difference between you both going back indoors defeated, and having to start again tomorrow, and going indoors with big grins.

In other examples, imagine that you are:

• a sniper waiting in a cold dark cramped location, for a target to appear
• playing chess, and while it is your turn to go next, you need to spend half an hour evaluating all off the possible moves of your opponent first
• in a stand off in the playground, and you are in a fight situation and you and your opponent are looking for the other one to land the first move.

The important fact of the day here, is that you absolutely must maintain patience. If you lose patience and rush in out of frustration, you risk a bad result out of mis-calculation. I thin the phrase is ‘maintain your poker face, at all times.’ Imagine if our sniper, gets tired of being holed up in the cold, and moves forward for a closer look, or our chess player makes a sudden move, or in the playground our scholar rushes into a fight, that they could have negotiated their way out of. That sudden action without proper preparation, could go well, but is fraught with risk.

The Greatest Causes Of Lost Patience

Knowing what causes a loss of patience, is the greatest asset to building it in the future.

• Tiredness
• Boredom
• Too cold or hot
• Poor behaviour from others
• Frustration, through lack of control of the situation
• Continued lack of progress, despite best efforts over a long period of time
• Others

Should We Really Expect Reward For Patience?

People often say that someone deserves a reward for their patience. For example, someone deserves a promotion for their patience, or someone has waited patiently for someone to arrive, and they are late, very very late. Most people would say that patience pays off and so a deserved benefit should present itself. But actually, isn’t that doing something with an expectation of something in return?

While it is important not to give patience through time, too willingly, as this leads to being walked on by others, it is also true that a warrior that comes from pure heart does not expect reward. This is because our warrior is simply living out their true self, through true values. Ad if they are extending their patience through conscious effort, they are clearly pushing their heart into greater performance. The greatest reward here us not from someone else , it is from knowing that one is true to ones own good and growing character.

If Patience Is A Virtue, How Can You Improve Your Patience Skills?

Knowing what causes lost patience, is the key to improving patience.

Physiological Hygiene Factors Around Personal Discipline

• Get plenty of sleep. Remember that an hour of sleep before midnight, is thought to be worth 2 hours afterwards. Be disciplined, when tempted to watch TV or your phone, or read after your ideal sleep time. This will avoid or reduce the rut of tiredness.
• Try to regulate your body temperature. Prepare for the day with enough of the correct clothing, which is dry and clean. Find shelter and ventilation when you need it. This will avoid or reduce the rut of too cold or hot.

Aesthetic Factors Around Personal Discipline

• Keep plenty of variety, and things that you like doing in your life. This will avoid or reduce the rut of boredom
• Avoid situations where you maybe in the vicinity of people with poor behaviour. If you cannot avoid it, or it’s too later to avoid it, rise above it, or put a stop to it. use the techniques of Avoid, Block, Counter Deflect, Evade, Meditate in the moment to rise above it. This will avoid or reduce the rut of poor behaviour from others
• MEDITATE IN THE MOMENT

Cognitive Factors Around Personal Discipline

• Avoid situations where you maybe in the vicinity of people with poor behaviour. If you cannot avoid it, or it’s too later to avoid it, rise above it, or put a stop to it. use the techniques of Avoid, Block, Counter Deflect, Evade, Meditate in the moment to rise above it. This will avoid or reduce the rut of poor behaviour from others
• Try to maintain control of your own situation, in order to maintain your own safety as well as your patience. This is not always possible. Where it isn’t try to limit the time where you are not in control, and accept, perhaps even embrace the time when you are not. This will avoid or reduce the rut of frustration, through lack of control of the situation
• Adopt a new strategy, take a fresh approach, bring in new people and or ideas, or simply choose to stick it out. Check that you are not as Einstein said, ‘expecting different results from the same actions.’ This will help to avoid or reduce the rut of continued lack of progress, despite best efforts over a long period of time

Some Practical Exercises To Extend Your Capacity For Patience

• If you have a dog, next time you walk it, try standing there and allowing the dog to sniff and explore for as long as they want to, rather than as long as you feel you can spare
• Next time someone speaks to you, put aside all distractions, and thoughts of what needs to get done, and you need to remember to do. Just listen, and consider what they are saying
• Spend an entire day, just doing something for the benefit of others
• See a task all the way through to perfection, no matter how long it takes, for example polish your car until every square inch or centimetre is gleaming

Simon

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