If there’s one challenge I’ve had my entire adult life, it’s practicing patience. I have none. I was reminded of this recently when I injured myself and had to stop running and hiking, which are two things I love so much I need to do one or the other EVERY DAY.
This whole experience of staying off my feet has been hard. And it reminded me of how sometimes we are forced to sit still and practice patience.
Sometimes, we need to step back.
Let’s say you’ve been in a questionable relationship, and you aren’t sure whether to stay or go. Or if you’ve said or done what you needed to say or do. You just want some answers, and for some reason, you are in this holding pattern indefinitely, waiting for a sign.
Or maybe you’ve dated a guy for a couple of weeks and you want to know RIGHT NOW if he is worth pursuing because you just don’t have it in you to waste more time on yet another failed relationship. Or maybe you have been on all the dating apps and swiped on ALL THE THINGS and have gotten nowhere. You lost patience some time ago. And sitting around even longer just makes you more frustrated.
I get being impatient for things to happen, I really do.
But here’s the thing I’ve learned, a very hard practice that I’m still trying to master. We have to cultivate more patience. While we might have the ability to call an Uber or order a pizza or create a playlist of our favorite music right now without waiting, we cannot order our lives in the same way. Other people don’t exist to fit into our little piece of the giant puzzle of the world, so we can’t tell them what to do or how to behave. Timetables aren’t ours to manipulate. In other words, there are some things we can’t control.
We should stop trying to control everything.
Patience is about losing control. It’s about facing the fear of the unknown. It teaches us to sit with uncomfortable feelings, or physical discomfort, and ride the wave. Yes, patience is about riding the wave instead of fighting against it.
The ocean will always win against your little tiny surfboard.
Patience isn’t a talent. It’s a skill, something to be cultivated.
We can do this through physical activities and mental challenges that train our brains to react differently – yoga and meditation, for instance. We can cultivate it through breathing techniques. We can cultivate it by taking a walk outside and clearing our heads.In other words, step out of the stress of the moment to gain more clarity.
Most importantly, we can cultivate patience through compassion. It might sound strange to think that forgiving yourself for mistakes or wrong decisions or wrong actions would help with patience, but it does. When you can forgive yourself more easily, you can forgive others, which leads to less frustration and more peace over time. Have compassion for those detours in life, because they set you back on your own path, to walk forward freely into something new and unknown. There’s no such thing as a mistake.
So take heart. Patience is not a virtue, it is a skill to be practiced.
I need to remind myself: I can become good at being patient, or at least, more tolerant when things don’t go according to my plans.
XO,
Kelly
About Kelly Seal
Kelly is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, CA. She blogs about dating, relationships, personal growth and what "healthy living" means to her. You can follow her on Google+, Twitter @kellyseal or through her website www.kellyseal.com.
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