Are you a patient person or vice versa? Impatience began to manifest itself in people more and more often. Why did this start to happen? How to overcome impatience?
Analysts suggest that the technical progress associated with digital technologies is to blame - Email, mobile phones, iPods and cameras. All this taught people to get results instantly. As a result, there was a desire to satisfy your needs immediately, quickly, clearly and exactly the way you want. If a person does not get what he wants right away, then he loses his temper or gets irritated. A familiar pattern of impatience?
E-mail for such impatient people is losing its popularity and may even go into oblivion. How so? No patience to wait a few minutes for an answer, let alone hours. Writing greetings or traditional words, for the sake of decency, also takes time, which is a pity to waste your energy on. More and more preferred instant messages, without rules of etiquette. However, the result of such e-mails is a lot of grammatical errors and errors, as well as the fact that they got to the wrong addressees at all.
Reading long printed texts is also not enough patience. People, trying to find important information, quickly jump from heading to heading or from one page to another.
This impatience is observed in other areas of activity. You may find yourself doing things faster than before. For example, driving too fast, talking fast, or spending money. Waiting for a green light at a traffic light, an elevator to arrive, or a computer to load can sometimes feel like an eternity.
Why did this happen? Until the end to understand this issue can not even the experts. However, it is known that impatience is very costly for people. What are the dangers of impatience? How to become more patient?
health hazard
First of all, impatience is injurious to health. Impatient people are more likely to experience frustration, anger and irritation. All these experiences increase the level of stress, which leads to harm to health. Impatience can trigger hypertension in young age. This is known from a study by the American Medical Association. There are other consequences of this pernicious quality - obesity. Impatient people prefer to eat inexpensive and easily accessible food - pop food, which is always at hand.
Postponement
Impatient people have a habit of not completing hard work to the end. This negatively affects both the individual and the economy of the country. One researcher, Ernesto Ruben, noted that because impatient people like to put off paperwork until later, such delays cost a lot of money and affect productivity.
Alcoholism and violence
A study of hundreds of men and women has established a link between impatience and alcohol-fueled violence.
reckless actions
Impatient people very often make rash and hasty decisions. Ilango Ponhaswami, a professor, concludes that intolerance is very costly - the loss of friends, suffering and pain, a lot of trouble. And all because of impatience and making the wrong decisions.
Financial difficulties
Impatient people have more debt. For example, newlyweds are impatient for a comfortable life. They buy on credit - a house, furniture, etc., which further affects their marriage. Burdened with debt, they are less happy than those who are debt-free and have a simpler life.
The recent economic crisis in the United States has exposed the intolerance of many people. They acquired property that was worth far more than their real savings. Taking out huge group loans, they are unlikely to be able to repay them years later, if at all.
Loss of friends
In conversation, too, intolerance is manifested. If a person has no desire to discuss something in detail, then he often speaks without thinking. He does not like to wait for others to speak and does not wait for them to say the main thing they wanted to say. Usually such an impatient interlocutor urges on and even finishes the sentence of the person he is talking to. So gradually impatience can destroy friendship. Who likes to be constantly pushed or looked at the clock?
Next, we will learn how to develop and maintain patience.
Reveal the causes
To do this, write what or who tests your patience. It can be someone from the family - spouse, children, parents. Or it can be some circumstances, like being late, you need to wait for someone, food not cooked on time, stress or a desire to sleep. Where does it happen more often - at work or at home?
But how can it help that you figure out the causes of impatience? The wise King Solomon gave a useful parable (see Proverbs 22:3) that if a wise man foresees difficulty, he will be able to hide in time, but a fool goes straight and gets into trouble. How can this be applied? If you anticipate an outbreak of irritation, then it can be prevented. To exercise patience requires a conscious effort at first. However, over time, the developed patience will become a quality of your nature and you will be able to show patience more often.
Simplify your life
When there is too much to do, it is very difficult to develop patience. I want to do a lot, talk with one, another, third, or visit many places at once. Most often, experiencing stress, a person begins to experience impatience. Our brain cannot concentrate on several tasks at once. Multitasking over time undermines the ability to concentrate and this has a detrimental effect on the manifestation of tolerance, the ability to solve problems, willpower, and judgment.
While in such a hurry, try to find opportunities to stop to feel the joy of life. Allocate your time correctly. Let it not be spent on useless hobbies. Better strengthen relationships with friends, for example.
Review your daily activities to simplify your life. You may have to part with something, and somewhere to moderate the pace. Or it's time to remove from life something that absorbs a lot of time. After such changes, you will definitely have time for patience.
Be Realistic
In life, not everything happens as quickly as you want. Therefore, you need to look at things realistically. Our expectations cannot keep up with the times. It remains only to be patient. Circumstances are not always for us, often against us. You need to remain calm and determine what may be in your power. Being annoyed if something is not within our power is unlikely to be beneficial.
For example, what do you do when you miss the bus or minibus? Instead of anger and resentment, think about the best way to get to the place. Or maybe walk? If you have to wait, use this time to read or make important calls.
Develop spirituality
How else can you develop patience? - Develop spirituality. The Scriptures have helped many people to develop this quality. Its principles, like bricks, fill those places where there was not enough love, peace, joy, self-control and meekness. With these qualities, it is easier to exercise patience. By reading the Bible one page each day, you can read it in a year. The page will take very little time - 5 minutes. Another 2-3 minutes if you reflect on what you read.
I wish you successful development of patience!
Patience is a must for all people. It helps you feel more energetic and calm. It improves the ability to listen and empathize, as well as to respond more effectively, not to quarrel, not to spoil relationships with loved ones.
Impatience is like anxiety. It is very tiring, destroys your nerve forces. Like anxiety, impatience can be controlled. Here are some ways:
1. Breathe deeply. Consciously managing your breathing can help you slow down your thinking. While someone asks you for something for the third time, you are breathing deeply, giving yourself time to calm down, not get annoyed.
2. Change focus. If you feel irritated, try to change your focus to the things that are given to you. positive emotions and a sense of peace. You have the right to choose what to focus on.
3. Every time you feel like your impatience is growing and you start to take it out on others, ask yourself why. Study your own thinking, not the flaws and absurdities of others.
We continue to practice patience:
4. Revamp your communication strategies if you are having difficulty understanding. Remind yourself that everyone is different. Take the opportunity to learn a new strategy. Learn to understand others, to look at things from different angles.
5. Make a list of goals for your patience. See what makes you irritable. Brainstorm possible ways responses will help you see the possibility of other responses that you can develop and become a more patient person.
6. Think back to times when others practiced their patience. Remember how it positively affected you. This realization can motivate you to be more patient with others.
7. Recall and analyze situations in which others were impatient with you. How did you feel? Do you want others to feel this way?
8. Mentally reward yourself for practicing patience or keep a diary of your victories. You should take pride in becoming more balanced and patient.
Why do we become irritable, impatient? Here are some reasons:
Unrealistic expectations
Why do we allow ourselves to be nervous, to risk our lives, rushing through a red light to save a few minutes? Psychological scientists argue that the reason for this behavior is unrealistic expectations, that is, we are in a hurry when we were taken for a trip instead of 20 minutes 15, when we are sure that we will get to the doctor on time, although before that he always delayed with other patients.
Costs of progress - mobile phone, e-mail, fax, etc. have accustomed us to the fact that we are used to receiving everything instantly - at the touch of a button. That's why we place high demands on speed and productivity.
The huge price of impatience
Impatience can harm not only mental but also physical health. You have almost reached work by car, and then suddenly there is a traffic jam! Your irritation grows every second, at this time the body sharply increases the content of stress hormones, blood pressure rises, heart rate increases, endorphins are produced - natural painkillers. If you are occasionally impatient, then this is not a problem. But if you show impatience always and everywhere, then you literally injure your body, because stress hormones weaken the immune system, blood vessels suffer due to increased pressure. In addition, relationships with relatives and friends deteriorate, because who will like picky and irritable people. For a mother who is always in a hurry, constantly irritated, children may feel abandoned and abandoned.
Principle of "here and now"
Feeling yourself in the present at the moment in which you are, focusing on this moment is the basis of the "here and now" principle, which is used in many religions. This practice is useful for the development of the spiritual sphere of man. When we focus on the moment, we are freed from negative thoughts of the past, anxious expectations of the future, this is how we learn to appreciate what we have, and not worry about what may or may not happen. Anxiety, impatience, according to psychologists, is inherited. If you notice such not the best characteristics for yourself, then this means that you will have to spend the rest of your life in impatience. Here are some tips to help you deal with impatience:
1. Take plenty of time to do what you need to do. After all, impatience manifests itself most often when we are late for somewhere, because in a normal situation we do not pay attention to how much the bus costs at traffic lights, in a traffic jam. When there is very little time left, even a person who hesitates when getting off the bus can make us nervous.
2. Consider Murphy's law, which says that if bad things can happen, then they will happen. Especially often the technician can fail, if you made a report before the last one, then the computer will definitely break or something will happen to the server and you will have to wait another hour until everything is fixed. We are accustomed to the fact that technology will always save, always at hand, and if something is wrong with it, then it causes irritation.
3. Accept that some things are beyond your control. Your friend is constantly in no hurry to meet you, being late at best by 15 minutes. He may not even realize that this behavior annoys you, talk to him about this topic. If the conversation did not work, then leave later than the appointed time, if, nevertheless, a friend came on time, then it will be useful for him to feel in your place.
4. View from the side. Before you decide to once again cross the road in the wrong place or at a yellow light, think about why you risk so much? Isn't the price of risk too high? Look at the situation from a different angle, then you will understand why such impatience and haste are dangerous.
5. Watch your breath. As soon as you feel that impatience begins to grow, then do a small breathing exercise: take 3 deep breaths with a breath hold for 3 seconds, and 3 exhalations. This simple exercise can be done anywhere.
6. Build an emotional retreat in your imagination. In your free time, close your eyes, imagine some place, it can be a beach, mountains, a meadow, where you feel good and calm. Listen to the sounds, smell the smells. Now you can always hide from the situation that annoys you in this beautiful place.
7. Consider all the good things in your life. Do you feel that irritation is getting out of control again? Remember that you have a favorite job, happy family, healthy children, etc. This will help you calm down and look at the world more objectively.
8. Accept some events. Our world is not perfect and sometimes you will have to sit in queues to the doctor, wait in line at the store, ride in a crowded bus. Take it for granted and as something you can't fix!
Imagine the following situation: you are waiting for your colleague to complete a report that you need for a meeting that is about to begin. All your muscles are tense, you start to sweat and break down on people who have nothing to do with either the report or the meeting. A familiar picture? So what do you do if you have an anxiety attack?
Why is patience necessary?
First of all, no matter how organized we are, no matter how competently we plan our working time, life periodically throws us force majeure, with which we cannot do anything. Again, we regularly have to wait for something. There is no escape from this.
And now we find ourselves in a situation where we really need to get something urgently from a person or people, or just wait for something, and they, as if on purpose, behave like in a slow motion movie!
We can, of course, unleash our irritation, quarrel with colleagues and relatives, mess things up and then regret what we have done for months. But will it benefit us?
People who suffer from frequent outbursts of impatience:
- rarely enjoy the sympathy and respect of colleagues,
- become isolated, people begin to avoid them,
- deprive themselves of prospects career development, they try not to appoint such people as leaders.
So where does impatience come from and how to deal with it?
Symptoms of a fit of impatience:
- rapid breathing,
- muscle tension,
- nervous movements of the arms and legs,
- irritation and anger
- nervousness,
- rush,
- spontaneous ill-conceived decisions.
What is the reason?
You have probably noticed that different surprises cause different reactions in you. In one force majeure situation, you are calm and know what to do, and another, perhaps a nasty little thing, drives you completely out of yourself.
The fact is that each of us has individual "triggers" - people, words or situations that provoke a state of impatience. And they are all different. This once again proves that it is not this or that situation that causes an attack of impatience, but our internal psychological clues and complexes.
Try to figure out your weak points. This is where the "Five Whys" technique will help you. Using this technique, analyze the most recent situation when you were impatient, and you may be surprised to get to the bottom of the true reasons for your impatience.
Knowing where you can go off the rails will help you stay alert in these situations.
What to do?
Now, in a calm state, it seems obvious to us that every minute twitching of a person who does urgent work for us will not speed up its execution. But how to avoid this in a state of impatience?
If you're experiencing the symptoms of impatience listed above, follow these three popular personal effectiveness websites* below:
- To begin with, give yourself a little physical activity, at least just walk. Muscle activity reduces stress.
- Switch your attention to other things, get distracted. Giving excessive importance to this problem, you deprive yourself of the opportunity to objectively assess the situation.
- Slow down: talk slower, move slower, breathe slower.
- If you are waiting for something, get distracted by a computer game, draw, read. If you are going to a place where waiting is possible, take a book or other activity with you.
- If you are waiting for something in the long term, break your wait into several stages, set intermediate control points (but not too frequent).
- Remember that you have a choice in how you respond to any situation. You can choose to be impatient or choose to be patient.
- If impatience is combined with outbursts of anger, read about anger management tools.
- Reward yourself for those times when you managed to overcome impatience, to behave adequately to the situation.
In times of stress, patience breeds peace of mind and not anger.
What is patience? I prefer to look in the dictionary first: "patience: the ability to accept and endure delay, difficulty, or adversity without getting angry or upset." I don't know anyone whose life is free from these three factors. In fact, I cannot remember a single day in my own life without the presence of one of these feelings.
For many years, my reaction to them was "angry" or, in any case, "disappointment." Then I realized that this response only made an already stressful and unpleasant situation worse. So I began to consciously try to respond to "delay, difficulty or trouble" in a different way. Sometimes the best thing I could do was bear the presence of these factors. However, I continued these attempts, and with practice, it became easier for me to "recognize" them with an open heart, as an inevitable part of my life.
When I was able to do this—tolerate and sometimes even acknowledge delay, difficulty, or discomfort—I noticed two things about the psychology of patience. First, being patient is treating yourself with compassion. Compassion is a way to reach out to those who are suffering, including yourself. I certainly suffer when I'm impatient, because lack of patience is a stressful reaction to what's going on in my life. I can feel stress both in my mind and in my body. So developing patience is self-care, which is the foundation of self-compassion.
Secondly, I have noticed that patience improves self-control - peace of mind makes it easier to survive ups and downs, and not toss and turn like a boat caught in a storm. The correlation between patience, increased self-compassion, and self-control convinced me of the value of patience. I thought: “Hmm, less suffering and stress, plus a calm acceptance of life as it is ... sounds good.” If you want to learn how to learn patience, then I recommend that you practice as follows. (Note: I cover this thought and emotion transformation approach in more detail in my books How to Wake Up: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide to Managing Joy and Sorrow and How to Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness: A Handbook.)
1. Recognize the emergence of impatience
This may be difficult at first. When something goes wrong (for example, we are stuck in a traffic jam), we tend to think that the reason for our impatience is external - something that happens "out there". Naturally, the reason is in what is going on in our minds, namely our response to the circumstances we are facing. So start by watching for impatience to build up in your mind in response to something not going the way we would like it to.
You may already know some of your annoying factors: being made to wait too long; when you are standing in a long queue; when you are trying to deal with a computer problem; when you have to wait a long time for a doctor; having to listen to someone explain something very simple for an impossibly long time (the latter is a trait of mine that tests my family's patience!).
Note that impatience is shown when something goes wrong - especially when people or our environment does not meet our expectations, even in circumstances that we cannot control (for example, traffic jams or long queues). Our expectations often do not match reality. I can give four examples of such expectations, and all of them can provoke impatience.
First, we tend to expect that the environment will meet our expectations: no traffic jams, no lack of parking spaces near our destination; no long queues; no delays at the airport; no long wait for food in the restaurant.
Second, we tend to expect people to live up to our expectations. They should behave the way we think they should behave. “The woman in front of me in line should not be talking to the cashier.” "If he said he would call at exactly three o'clock, he should call at three sharp." Even if we're "right" (after all, it's polite to call at the promised time), people often don't live up to our expectations, that's a fact.
Third, our expectations are often unrealistic when it comes to developing new skills, whether it's a new craft, a new app, or fixing something yourself. We think we should be able to pick up new skills quickly, no matter how unfamiliar or difficult they are to us.
Fourth, our expectations are almost always unrealistic about what goes on in our minds. We think we should be able to control the thoughts and emotions that we have. However, unexpected thoughts and emotions arise all the time. Thinking and experiencing emotions is in the nature of our consciousness; in my experience, it's unstoppable. Without a doubt, impatience does not stop this process!
2. Explore how your mind and body react to impatience
Allowing yourself to feel impatience is an important step towards acknowledging it. This is important because, in my experience and from a psychological point of view, it is impossible to start transforming a tense mental condition until you admit you're stuck in it. So work on getting to know what impatience feels like. Is your mind calm or agitated? Is your body relaxed or tense? Never before has impatience felt like something pleasant to my mind or body. Knowing that this is an unpleasant feeling helps me motivate myself and try to change how I react to “delay, difficulty or unpleasantness” - our three dictionary friends.
3. Start transforming impatience into patience
This takes practice. Practice full of patience. And since patience is an act of sympathy for oneself, I hope you will sympathize with your inability to be patient in some cases. In this regard, here are some strategies for transforming impatience into patience.
Let's start with those times when the environment or people don't match your expectations: for example, you're stuck in a traffic jam or you find yourself in line right behind a person who is chatting with a cashier. First, note that you are reacting to the situation with impatience. Second, pay attention to what you are experiencing in your mind and body. Then ask yourself, "Is there anything I can do to make a difference without making things worse for myself and others?" If your answer is "no" (in most cases it will be), then see if you can find something, as I would call it, "good" in this situation. Namely, start focusing on something pleasant or interesting while you wait.
This is self-awareness training, meaning you make a conscious choice—supported by effort—to pay attention to what is going on in your field of consciousness. When I feel impatience kicking in, I can almost always find something in the present moment that piques my curiosity or interest. This allows me to respond to what is happening, not with "anger" or "sorrow", but with patience.
Being in a traffic jam, you can consider different brands, models and ages of cars on the road; you can strike up a conversation with another person in the car; you can find a radio station. If I find myself in a long line, I can stare in amazement at the ridiculous headlines in the tabloids posted on the counters next to the cashier; you can look at the people standing around me - how they all look different and each of them has their own life story about which I know nothing; you can even overhear the chatter that delays me!
In general, I try to cultivate friendliness towards talkers, to enjoy the way they enjoy each other's company. After all, what is another one or two minutes in line? If, like me, you find it difficult to stand for a long time, you can look for something to lean on or stand in a stable position to be more balanced. Sometimes I carry a cane with me.
I mean, yes, the initial choice is to have a "no traffic jam on the freeway" rule and a "no chatter at the checkout" directive, but most of the time we don't have that choice. When this happens, I know what I would prefer if one alternative is to be upset and angry, and the other is to try to make the experience enjoyable, or at least bearable.
There are still unrealistic expectations in the formation of new skills. This expectation is partly shaped by our cultural attitude to hurry, hurry, hurry, whatever we do. However, if we acted more slowly and patiently, not only would we enjoy more, but we would also likely develop this skill better.
Finally, about unrealistic expectations in controlling our consciousness. Instead of feeling impatient (“angry” or “upset”) about what is going on in our minds, we could deal with unwanted thoughts and emotions with more ease, sometimes even with humor in relation to the unbridled mind. In my new book, How to Wake Up, I quote from one of the first Buddhist books I read, " In simple words Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana. Here is what he said about consciousness:
“[One day] you will come face to face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are absolutely crazy. Your mind is a screeching, gibbering madhouse on wheels, rolling erratically down the hill, completely out of control and helpless. No problems".
I love this quote for two reasons. First of all, I take comfort in the fact that I'm not the only one with a screeching, babbling madhouse on wheels instead of consciousness. Second, Bhante says, "No problem." I take "no problem" as confirmation that I can learn to be patient with this "crazy" mind. I can learn not to be upset or angry when unwanted thoughts and emotions come up, but instead to calmly acknowledge their presence, knowing that, in time, the universal law of fragility will help me. Conditions will change... and so will my mind.
We can transform impatience into patience. It's worth the effort, because being patient is about treating ourselves with compassion, and it also helps us to calmly accept things as they are... and that's a good feeling.
Toni Bernard, Lawyer, Former UC Davis Lecturer in Law, Buddhist Practitioner, Author