The Virtue Of Patience, How To Manifest And Develop Patience

In this blog, we look at ‘How To Manifest And Develop The Virtue Of Patience’. Yes indeed, you too can develop within your own self, the patience of a saint. Let’s be fair, many ancient saints, were warriors of their own religion. As we know religious people, look to stretch their patience further than before in search of a higher self. For many this starts with getting into the mode of having empathy for the other person, even to the point of putting them first for a while. As a foundation, start by letting go of what you cannot control. This is what I will teach you to do, using my own ‘patience virtue development story’.

Featured Image Photo by Andrea Piacquadio LINK

Other relevant titles that I thought of using in this post were, ‘How To Have The Patience Of A Saint’ and ‘How To Master The Patience Of A Jedi’. Both are very relevant.

Initial Challenge – The Virtue Of Patience

Everyday, you see patient people, who are super calm, kind and have such low anxiety, that they can take the time to be wise too. So effortless, so natural. Let’s set this great, high standard as our new set point.

Initial Vulnerability – The Virtue Of Patience

On a good day, I feel as though I make a conscious effort to be that way. Time pressures, expectations from other people, my own to do list all impact my patience performance. So on a bad day it seems so much further away, that being super patient, can feel out of reach.

Introducing Build My Warrior’s BLOG – The Virtue Of Patience

It ‘FEELS’ out of reach….BUT, it so is not.
In this episode, we will learn how we can train our minds, to be more patient. Patience is a virtue, that we can learn, that we can develop, and add to our warrior armoury. The more we practice it, the easier we can switch it on. Follow me through this blog to learn how.

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Definition Of The Virtue Of Patience

The Collins dictionary defines patience as the quality of being able to stay calm and not get angry. Especially when something takes a long time.

The Britannica Encyclopaedia defines patience as the ability to wait for a long time without becoming annoyed or upset.

For Build My Warrior, I define the virtue of patience, as the natural ability to maintain a low level of anxiety, (therefore calmness), in the face of time pressure and performance pressure, such that a full range of judgement and other cognitive abilities can be accessed.

Further Explanation Of The Challenge – The Virtue Of Patience

A good way to develop your patience, is to look at examples of your own behaviour when you are not patient. Then look for ways to re-frame your mindset to perform in a better mode. So to do this I picked a scene and went with it. Picture your self in these situations. Have you felt a lack of patience through one of more of these?

I had some valuable examples, where I have developed my own patience. We will look at one of them in detail in a moment. For now, some examples are:

1) at work with clients or suppliers, when something is not as it should be. You are under pressure to perform, but you need their cooperation, which is not forthcoming.

2) out walking the dog in the morning when you need to get to work, but everything is taking far too long, and you were already running late before setting off.

3) putting the children to bed, at the end of a long challenging day at work, when your energy has completely run out, and your children are at their moment of uncooperative super tiredness. Then it all goes wrong. You need to dig deep, but the natural tendency is to feel the need to vent.

4) fixing the car, or some aspect of DIY. You’re really tired, it’s getting late and dark and cold, you have just one more task to do under the bonnet, and then you see that you’ve done it wrong and you need to start all over again.

All of these scenes, have the potential to push your patience. So how do you retrain your brain, to keep digging deep, and keep your cool, calm collective professional head on?

Well this is how I did it.

How I Developed This Virtue aka ‘The Method’ – The Virtue Of Patience

I looked at the way I do the morning dog walk. I didn’t have a major problem, with the way I walked my dog. For sure, I knew that we both enjoyed it most days. However, I was interested to see if pushing my own patience further, could gives us a better still experience. Especially for her.

Developing The Virtue Of Patience – Reflection Stage

I decided to do some serious reflection. Before I began, I made sure that I was sitting comfortably as I was preparing to visualise my way through a typical scenario. This meant I could mentally visualise, or replay, what was working and also what was not working. Therefore, I could work out what ‘features’ or ‘behaviours’, I needed to keep, change, and also what I needed to stop doing.

It was great, as I knew that I did not need to be an expert in meditation, just to be able to sit still and upright, relaxing my body and mind, while breathing steadily. I blocked out all other thoughts and focussed on how the walk typically goes. I closed my eyes, although that is not essential. See what works for you.

So to make this really work well, I imagined the environment, the day of the week, the time of day, the smells, sounds, what I had on my mind, what task I had just done, and what I was due to do next. Also what mood I would be in. And the best bit, I imagined seeing myself in the third person. A bit like a drone is hovering a few feet above my left or right shoulder, looking towards me, from in front, and sometimes behind.

This idea helps me to have an impartial view of myself. If you find it difficult or not helpful, either find a different view, or revert to seeing through your own eyes. Either way, find a way to be impartial. Impartiality is a more honest perspective. Honesty will help you so much more with this exercise.

Developing The Virtue Of Patience – What It Was Like ‘Before’

So I am visualising myself in a drone position, 3rd person view. So how do I look?

I have a set routine on a week day morning, which involves feeding the guinea pig emptying the dishwasher, making sandwiches, having breakfast, getting ready for the day, and taking my youngest to school. Somewhere in that, I need to walk our 6 pound long haired chihuahua. Her name is Lola. She is a cute loving dog, who we all adore, but she is also very lazy in the mornings, and would much rather go back to bed….for an hour.

So when we all need to be quick to be ready to leave the house, it is not at all difficult to see the anxiety frustration levels rise up the gauge. Add to that, how Chihuahua’s love to sniff, wander, sniff again, stop, look, pause, risk assess, move, pause risk assess again. Getting to the end of the street, on 4 little 4 inch legs can be like a long slow city commute, for a big important meeting.

Therefore, when I am watching the time, and can visualise the morning traffic building up, yes I feel more than, frustrated. Come on Lola, do your business and keep moving. By the end of the walk, I have probably pulled encouragingly on the lead more than I would like to, felt frustrated but kept my cool, hurried us both along, and am now behind on my own schedule. I make it home with a satisfied and empty dog, but it could be better.

Developing The Virtue Of Patience – The Development Itself

So let’s do some development technique, aka the bit in the middle, or the method to developing patience. In short, Lola is a domesticated animal, and although I can train her and encourage her, she is an independent being.

So I cannot fully control her every move and speed at which she does things for the whole walk. But I can control my own, and so hopefully if I cut her some slack, she will reciprocate. Notice how I begin to lay the foundations for patience building, by letting go of what I cannot control.

I am going to apply some empathy, in order to see how to cut that slack and see where we go from there. So using empathy, let’s replay that drone view, to see things from Lola’s point of view. Lola is a tiny dog, who happily spends most of the day in the house.

She sleeps through the night in her own bed, for 10 hours. She sleeps in the afternoon for another 3, and at some point in the evening for another 2. So she is awake for 9 hours. We walk her 3 times a day and it adds up to about an hour. We played around with that see what works for her and it definitely suits her best.

Flying ‘drone like’, through the walk and I pay particular attention to what Lola is doing, and what she wants to do. Lola is trying to tell me, “Dad I want to stand here and look for a little longer to satisfy myself that the man over there is not a threat”. “Dad, I want to sniff this bush a bit longer, I know you want to move on, but I don’t. Dad, I know the other owners walk quicker than we do, but I don’t want to”.

Developing The Virtue Of Patience – The Breakthrough

What is Lola’s point here? Lola is in the house and happy to be in the house, for most of the day. She loves the yard too, but mostly she is indoors. So, here is the theory setting us up for a ‘BREAKTHROUGH’. A house, to a dog is a stale environment. It does not have natural smells, and temperatures, and breezes, and sounds that intrigue a dog to go and investigate. It is great as it has their favourite people in it. BUT, it is all the same artificial. When Lola is outside, she is in her domain, and of course it is her anxiety vent or outlet.

So why not let her do this walk at her pace for maximum benefit? After all the purpose of the walk is to 1. give your dog a chance to do their business and maintain their digestion, but also 2. to burn off active and sensory energy. In fact small dogs can expend more energy, by sensing their surroundings, than through the act of physical-muscular exercise itself.

It is not a logistical problem for me, to get out the door 10 minutes earlier, even if it means starting my day earlier. The reward for me is to see Lola, enjoy the chance to pause and wait, and enjoy her surroundings, for her to be satisfied before she moves onto the next 5 paces. So here I am, back at the start, putting Lola first, and enjoying the benefit of heightened patience. Rewards for both of us.

Since I have taken this approach, I have felt much more patient, less anxious over time in the morning, and much happier with my morning walk with Lola.

Developing The Virtue Of Patience – The Summary

As I said at the start of this blog, the key message here is this. You too can develop within your own self, the patience of a saint. Let’s be fair, many ancient saints, were warriors of their own religion. Stretching your patience further than before, starts with getting into the mode of having empathy for the other person, and by putting them first for a while. As a foundation, start by letting go of what you cannot control. Then look impartially at what typically happens. Finally summarise what went right and what can be improved.

Alignment With Build My Warrior’s Core Value – The Virtue Of Patience

So as I say on Build My Warrior, Warrior Spirit is a creed of virtues and life skills, deployed from a balanced mind, to achieve a pre-determined goal.

The virtue here is patience, developed by use of another virtue which is empathy. Using empathy to see life from another person’s point of view, allows us to see value in taking more time with the other person, which in itself is patience. So these virtues compliment each other in a circle of full completion.

Overall, practicing the ability to perform in this way, is a life skill. After all, we are teaching ourselves to switch on patience, as a conscious intention. Having this life skill moves us closer to having a balanced mind. It is clarity of the mind, that we achieve from maintaining a balanced mind. We need that, in order to think positively from point to point, such that we can achieve our goal.

How many times have you been in a stressful situation that went wrong. Then you reflected later in the day, and thought oh now, if only I had done….? You can start to have the realisation there in the moment, by being patient, and therefore of balanced mind, and therefore of clear mind.

So no matter what you are doing this week, you will need to think clearly to achieve this week’s goals.
So go develop patience by practicing empathy and visually walking through it. Start TODAY! Start NOW!

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Closing Statement

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Good luck

Namaste
Simon

Simon

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