Patience.
React differently in frustrating situations.
A fast paced world where things happen so fast. Have your groceries delivered within an hour. Consume opinions and news before you get out of bed.
Patience is one of the few things you can’t order online. It has to be cultivated and built upon. Its in short supply and much needed in todays’ all out sprint lifestyle.
I’ll use a situation I encounter fairly often as example on how to build patience - waiting in a line to be served.
You enter a shop and there is a long line ahead of you. It is at the end of the month and looks like you might have to wait for a while.
Lets pick this apart
Make a decision.
You have a choice in front of you: stay in line and wait for your turn to be served or leave. Its as simple as that. You’re not forced to be in the situation.
Each decision brings a set of consequences with it.
If you leave you’ll have to come back at another time. Spend more time in the line. Postpone another appointment to keep this one.
You decided to stay in the line and wait it out. After all you are the 3rd person in the line and it looks like things are going a bit faster. Somewhere a baby starts to cry. A phone rings and the person behind you talks about how their weekend went. On speaker phone.
+2 Frustration.
Making a decision is the first part. A concious decision gives you options: you know you might have to wait. You know it is busy. You know everyone in this space has a high level of frustration. This brings us to acceptance.
Acceptance
A component of building patience is acceptance of the situation. You accept what you cannot change and you don’t dwell on it. A question to ask yourself in a situation where you have to decide to be patient or not:
What do you stand to gain by having an aggressive reaction to a crying baby?
What is the payoff in complaining about the long lines in front of you?
Is it worth risking an altercation by telling the person behind you that no one in here cares about they did over the weekend?
More often than not getting adgitated or frustrated doesn’t help the situation. It adds fuel to the fire.
Be Mindful.
Look around at the situation.
Is it only you experiencing a difficult time? Unlikely. The mother of the crying infant might have a family at home waiting for her to return. The person in front of you just lost their job and is frustrated by the situation. The gentleman talking on his phone to his friend might be talking his brother or father who he hasn’t seen in a while.
We don’t know everything but we often react like we do. Be mindful about the situations around you.
Compassion
The two people working behind the counter are rushing around to assist everyone in a timely manner. From the back you hear someone complaning about bad service.
Do you know that they are short staffed?
Do you know that one of them has a sick family member at home?
You don’t and thats not your problem but compassion in a frustrating situation helps.
Everyone in this situation is under an amount of pressure. Aggression isn’t adding any value. You made a choice to be here. Your compassion for a situation gets more understanding and appreciation.
In closing
Patience is often seen or describe as a weak character trait anyone accepting a situation gets a bad rep.
Patience isn’t the mark of weakness. It shows deeper understanding, better awareness and plenty of compassion for situations we often know nothing about.
Go and practice some patience today.
Thanks for reading :)