How to Be Patient?

Note: This article is by Celestine Chua, who explains the problem of impatience, analyzes its causes, and offers some solutions to address it based on her personal experience.

This means that you are not impatient because of your nature or because it is a trait you inherited, rather, it came as a result of some beliefs that you formed about yourself and the world around you.

Impatience can be addressed using encouragement, regulating breathing, meditation, and other skills, which may be of limited benefits since they do not address the root cause of the problem. Therefore, the most important point is to understand the root cause of your impatience and find a solution from within you and not from the environment that surrounds you, which will bring about a permanent change in your behavior.

The Root Cause of Impatience

So what leads to impatience?

To understand this, we must first know the meaning of the word “impatience.” According to the dictionaries of the language, “impatience” means lack of endurance, fidgeting, not accepting any frustrating matter, or any delays and obstacles.

An impatient person never wants to wait for others or does so reluctantly and gets angry when things don't go as planned. They often have a deep sense of urgency to get things done and move on to the next thing, task, place, or stop. Also, they hardly care or think about what is going on in the present moment because their mind is preoccupied with thinking about what they should do later.

As you can see, the impatient person often feels a great deal of urgency, internal pressure, and tension, so it's like they are trying to rush to get somewhere, or they need to finish something as quickly as possible.

But why does an impatient person feel the urgency more than others? What is the reason for this urgency? What exactly is all this rush about?

My Experience with Impatience

Perhaps it might be of some use to share my experience with impatience.

I used to be a very impatient person and would get so upset when people stood in my way that I could never wait for the bus for more than a few minutes only to get angry at how long it had taken. If things were progressing slower than expected, I would get annoyed and angry and questions such as “Why is this so slow?” “Why isn’t this done faster? What next?” are more than familiar to me.

The strange thing is that I didn't realize that I was impatient until a year ago because you don't seem to know how involved you are until you think about it. I have always thought that my reactions were normal and that they were just uncalculated responses that anyone who faced the same situation could do. However, when I stopped for a moment and reflected on my thoughts and behavior, I realized that I was a very impatient person.

And as I dug deep into the cause of my impatience problem, my answers opened my eyes to the truth. As I frankly asked why I was always in such a hurry, it turned out that I was so obsessed with achieving a certain vision and a specific future goal that I completely missed out on living in the present moment.

Then, when I dug deeper, I realized that all of this focus on the future was caused by an ingrained feeling of dissatisfaction with myself. I had always had a deeply rooted belief in my subconscious mind that I wasn't good enough, and I imagined that if I could make a change in myself and achieve greater visions and more goals, I would be satisfied and happy in the end, so I focused on the future and took it as a source of my salvation.

But it didn't work out as well as I had imagined because while I would feel happy whenever I reached one of my goals, it was only a matter of time until I started wondering about the next step and returned to that impatient personality. I was always in such a hurry trying to get from one place - be it a mental perception or an actual place - to another and I was driven to keep going and keep going towards this far-fetched vision in order to finally have the happiness I had always wanted.

Self-Dissatisfaction and Its Relation to Impatience

The problem was not that I hadn't achieved my ultimate goal yet because my goals or vision would never know an end as long as there was always room for growth. The same applies to my desire to set goals as well. The desire to improve the situation is an integral part of being a human being. Indeed, there is nothing worse than being a person without a vision or dreams.

The problem was two things wich are the feeling of ingrained sadness in myself and the belief that something had to be achieved in order to live happily and be good enough. I couldn’t get rid of the belief that I am suffering from something wrong and that there is something that must be fixed, which prompted me to continue looking to the future to fill this gap.

However, this was not true as I had nothing wrong with me and I had nothing wrong with the present moment in which I was living.  My mistaken belief was the cause of my constant feeling of dissatisfaction and my constant attempt to deal with the aspects of myself that gave me this feeling, which remained with me even after I dealt with it.

It was precisely this that made almost everything on my nerves because every little thing — the bus being late or the photocopier breaking down — got in the way of realizing my ultimate vision, which in turn prevented me from becoming a popular and desirable person. All these little things stood in the way of my happiness, and the feeling of panic from the outside world was caused by my fear of spending another second in this state that I hate.

The solution to my impatience problem was finally addressing the beliefs I held that were limiting my abilities.  I wondered why I kept feeling like I wasn't good enough and the justifications for hating myself in this way.   When I did, my impatience faded away easily, and so I became patient.

Impatience: An Emotion That Has No Place In Your Heart

The root cause of impatience may not be the same for everyone and my story that I shared is an example of how impatience is really a consequence, not a problem to be addressed.

Although it is natural to look to the future and want to achieve your goals as soon as possible, but there is definitely something wrong when this desire repeatedly manifests itself as a constant sense of impatience, a reason to feel unhealthy self-pressure,  and dissatisfaction with the obstacles that stand in your way, as all of them are negative feelings charged with tension based on a sense of fear and have no place in our lives. Also, their presence usually indicates non-constructive beliefs that should be addressed as soon as possible.

Every person has the right to have a desire for a better future and to live in peace in the light of the present moment, but these are two options that are not mutually exclusive.

Now I'm going to show you a simple 15-minute exercise to find the root cause of your impatience, If you go through bouts of impatience sometimes or you are impatient most of the time, adopt this exercise to discover the root cause behind this undesirable trait.

An Exercise to Detect Impatience

Grab a pen and paper, or open up your favorite text editor, and get ready to write:

1. Think about recent events during which you lost your patience.
2. Ask yourself why you are so impatient, and write down everything that comes to your mind.
3. Dig deeper into your answers by questioning them. Ask why, or ask additional questions to keep your train of thought from breaking.
4. Repeat the previous step until you get to the root of the problem.

Example 1

For example, there is a man who is constantly snappy with the people around him even though everyone else avoids upsetting him.

Why am I so impatient?

I'm impatient because others are so slow and I'm sick and tired of people standing in my way. No more waiting, it's time to do things my own way.

What makes me hurry?

My dreams, my ideal future.

Why am I in such a hurry to get there?

Because I wasted enough time waiting for others, I'm not old yet, and every second  I wait is a waste of time.

Why am I in such a hurry to get what I want?

Because I don't want to die without achieving an achievement that is credited to me, or else I will put myself in a very unfortunate situation.

Why?

Because it is important that I don’t die without leaving some legacy behind.

Why?

Because if I don't, I will be considered a useless person.

Why?

Because I'm a failure.

conclusion

This person's impatience stems from his belief that he is not fit to do anything; therefore, he is always in a hurry to do more and in a constant attempt to prove his abilities. It turns out that his father has been degrading him since he was young, which made him view himself as a useless person. Although his father passed away, this feeling still haunts him today.

Solution: The solution lies in addressing the misconception that he is a useless person, as the reason that drives him to think in this way is the way his father treated him when he was young, not because he is not fit to do anything. Addressing the misconception will free him from the chains of his past, which in turn will free him from the problem of his constant impatience.

Example 2

The second example is the mother who is constantly losing patience with her children.

Why do I lose patience with my children?

I do not have patience with them because they always mess around and spread chaos Also, they do not carry out my instructions, and their focus is quickly distracted.

Why does this bother me?

Because they need to learn to get things right because there will come a day when I won't be on their side. When that happens, they will have to take care of themselves and I am not sure if they could do that in my absence.

Why does this bother me?

Because my mother wasn't there to teach me the simple things in life, as she died when I was a little girl, so I had to learn many things after suffering, those things that others easily learn from their parents. Because of that, I felt that my share of things had always been the worst, unlike others whose parents were on their side, and I felt that life was not fair.

conclusion

This mother bears a feeling of grievance towards her mother for her death when she was young and towards life because she robbed her mother prematurely from her. Also, she fears that she will not always be there to guide and help her children, so she unintentionally imposed these feelings on her children. This results in her becoming impatient with them when in fact she is acting on her past instead of taking proper care of her children.

The solution: Letting go of her fear and her sense of grievance by addressing those pent-up feelings and viewing her children as innocent young souls in need of care, and they are not to blame for the loss she suffered in her childhood, as well as they should not deal with that.

Some Thoughts on Addressing Beliefs from the Past

Looking back, I realized that my impatience was very detrimental to my health, and many of its negative effects could not be noticed right away. Rather, it slowly intensified over time, and I only felt the difference when I got rid of my impatience.

For example, I didn't realize how tense my facial muscles -including my forehead- were until I addressed the root cause of my impatience, as I always looked like a frowning person before, and I knew that my face was always a little convulsive, but I didn't know that my impatience was the reason for that.

I was always worried about the simplest things even though I didn't show it, and that made me an irritable person. I would then try to fight those irritations internally so that the negativity wouldn't come out into the public, which made me feel like I was burning from the inside.

Perhaps the biggest problem was that my impatience made me live in the future instead of the present, so I often didn't care what was going on in the present, being too busy thinking about what was to come.

On a small scale, this meant that I often missed details that I would have noticed if I had been more present. As they say, in haste there is remorse, and in deliberation there is safety.  But on a large scale,  I wasn't enjoying life as I should. I have been just a worker moving from place to place briskly, and I wasn't living a real life like I was supposed to.

As for today, I am happy because I enjoy the virtue of patience. My life has changed completely. I am now happier than ever, at peace with myself, and living in the present moment, not the future. At the same time, I still have high hopes for the future, which I am constantly striving to achieve and I love the present moment in which I live and hope for a better future. It is the moment I live for now, not the future or the past for sure.

In Conclusion

I hope that this article will be useful in developing your virtue of patience and that you will know that patience is already within you and you do not have to deliberately impose it on yourself.

In order to become a truly patient person in your mind, heart, body, and spirit, all you have to do is to address the wrong beliefs that make you impatient. When you do that, you will find patience a virtue that does not need effort.