Are You A Patient Person?

Lots of folks have trouble with consistently being patient, and certainly it’s an important part of all relationships. None of us are prompt, timely and understanding all the time, and since it’s so easy to slip into becoming impatient it’s worthwhile to explore it.

By and large, impatience is a reaction to a certain circumstance.  I don’t think I know of anyone who is naturally and constitutionally impatient; impatience is usually a reaction to actual situations or the anticipation of certain situations. Impatience is all about becoming irritated due to feeling inconvenienced, having to wait too long for something, or something taking longer to happen than we anticipate.

It’s been said that frustration is often a function of expectations.  If we expect something to happen promptly and it doesn’t, we get frustrated…and impatient. How to get around this?  Revise your expectations!

Let’s think about it – do we live in a world that tends to underestimate how long things are going to take or not?  Most people agree that our society is oriented toward things happening rapidly and seamlessly – faster and easier – than they did previously.  However, many situations take the same processing time this year that they required last year!  Plants take a certain amount of growing time, injuries take a predictable amount of healing time, and academic learning takes certain ranges of study & contemplation time.  We can rush these processes, but do we wind up with a good result, a quality product?  I doubt it.  Athletes who are rushed through a recovery regimen often re-injure themselves and end up more compromised than after the first injury.  Flowers that are “forced” to bloom early in the spring for display events don’t transplant well and commonly die soon after blooming.  Students who “cram” for exams forget much of the material following the test – who among us hasn’t done this?  The learning we should take away from these examples: good things take time. Caving in to impatience and rushing usually yields us a very poor product.

Being patient signals that we have an appreciation of limitations and that we possess goodwill.  To be patient is to be trusting, believing that a good outcome is possible and that rushing and falling into impatience will only complicate the process.