I genuinely love when these aha moments land because it helps me to start noticing where else I am doing this. I can name a few areas, like sending a text and expecting an answer quickly, asking someone to do something and wanting it done as soon as possible, etc.
So what is patience? According to dictionary.cambridge.org, it’s the ability to wait, or to continue doing something despite difficulties, or to suffer without complaining or becoming annoyed.
A benefit of patience is to have time for strategic thinking to completely evaluate a situation. I started looking into how I could develop patience and realized that like most things, it’s like a muscle that can be trained.
Let’s start with some deep breaths ☺ which are always useful to relax, giving more space and time to look at the situation. It seems patience and mindfulness go hand in hand, taking note of the situations that cause the impatience and why.
It’s good to practice waiting for things so that when you really do need to wait, you are more used to it. So start small with waiting to eat the cookies (doesn’t this remind you of the famous delay gratification experiment where they got kids to wait with eating the marshmallow? (1)
I’m starting to notice when I’m being impatient and that’s already a good first sign. When my class came, there were a lot more than three of us. My sifu was right. I just needed to be patient. One step at a time. Is patience something you need to learn?
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