The definition of patience is “remaining calm when something is out of your control”. What I love about this definition is the point that whatever your impatient about, is out of your control. Because if you could control it, you would speed up the process or make it happen faster. If you were in control of it, you wouldn't have that impatient feeling and the fact that you can't bring it into your control, makes it even more frustrating.
Let's take the example of manifesting. You really want something and you really want it now. Yet that manifesting process is reliant on your belief systems, your visualisation and other things like that. In essence, it's universal timing that's going to bring this manifestation into place. Hence it’s out of your control and that can lead to impatience.
Yet it’s this universal timing that is actually the best thing about manifesting. I've had so many manifestations where I thought the thing I was manifesting was exactly what I wanted, yet it never came to fruition. Then later on I look back and realise that I didn’t really want that thing as much as I thought and if I had have received that thing I would have been stuck in a position where I wouldn't have wanted to be. So whilst we may feel impatience when manifesting because it’s out of our control… it’s actually all playing out exactly as it should.
Let’s use the example of waiting in a line for something and as you wait you become more and more impatient. Why? Because progression in the line is totally out of your control. So it's really interesting to understand that impatience normally comes because things are out of our control.
So what can we do about this? How can we be more patient?
First of all bring your awareness to what triggers your impatience. Why is it that you feel you need to control that situation? In The Change Journey book I talk about the three main triggers for my impatience are:
FOMO – fear of missing out.
Extreme competitiveness
Sense of increased self-importance
These triggers, aren't going to be things that you’ll like about yourself, but that's okay. Remember nobody is judging you. We all have quirky things that we want to change and that's the whole point of The Change Journey, bringing our awareness to areas that we want to change.
So to find your triggers… look at the times when you become impatient, see if you can find some common triggers that set off your impatience. Bring yourself awareness to times where you are feeling impatient and start to ask yourself; what is it about this situation that's triggering me? Is it the fact that I'm missing out? Is it the fact that I feel more important than other people? If you keep monitoring your impatient times, you'll get to see that there's a pattern of triggers repeating.
Bring your awareness to the pattern and see if you can name your impatience triggers.
By having the awareness of these triggers, you’ll be able to counter balance them with a solution. For instance, if I'm standing in a line and I realise I’m becoming impatient, I look at the trigger… oh this is my self importance trigger. So then I ask myself “what makes me more important than those three other people in front of me?” The answer is nothing. So now I'm able to stand in the line and be patient because I know deep down I’m not better than anyone else and it’s just an old trigger activating. Voila – patience.
All this awareness come back to your values. When you really understand your values both your positive values and your shadow values, you’ll be able to see how they show up all the time in your life and how they affect your thoughts, feelings and actions.
When you can start to change these thoughts, feelings and actions that aren’t serving you, then you start to love yourself more, you start to appreciate yourself more and you start to believe in yourself more. And that's the beauty of The Change Journey and that's what we're aiming for.
To enhance your Patient Polly, start to journal around what are the impatience triggers you are discovering, and then journal for counter actions and fixes to help increase your patience.
If you're a beautifully patient person, then you don't need Patient Polly. God bless you and the beautiful patient people that are polite and wait and let other people go first. You guys are my saviours and my inspiration. I’d love for you to take a moment and give yourself a pat on the back and congratulate yourself for having such a beautiful trait that you are embellishing and just really embrace that because it's also good to really be proud of ourselves when we find our positives.
Comments