How to Become a More Patient Person

Welcome back; I hope you have been well and that you have been remaining true to your core. This week on AMC, we speak about patience; we remind each other of its importance and significance, particularly in today's modern and fast-paced world. We also touch on three practical strategies that you can implement today that will improve your patience level.

Why is patience necessary?

Understanding why patience is necessary becomes more straightforward when we imagine a scenario in our lives that has turned sour because we failed to control our emotions.

Patience is essential because the vast majority of life is out of our control; we have little say in how someone or a situation will react; of course, we can influence or manipulate the problem at hand, but we are primarily powerless to the whims of destiny. Practising patience then becomes critical due to this powerlessness because reacting to unfolding situations in a hostile or active state is often unfruitful if not damaging in the long run. Therefore, the best option is to do nothing at all and wait until you have either gathered more information so that you may make an informed decision or extricate yourself entirely.

Patience is crucial because we are ultimately powerless in the face of life's ebb and flow, and immediate reactions are often more damaging than constructive. Therefore, exercise your patience muscle to lengthen the space of time between your action and the developing scenario at hand; this will allow you to make better-informed decisions and appear more powerful and in control.

What causes impatience?

We trigger our impatience by our need to control or manipulate our surroundings for our best interests. A good example is browsing YouTube, and an advertisement begins to play before the video we wish to view plays; we immediately start to rapidly click the 'skip ad' button well before the mandatory five-second period has elapsed. This universal example perfectly illustrates our impatient nature and our compulsive need to control our environment despite it being beyond our control.

Another cause for impatience is our inherent and often subconscious need for instant gratification (see this entry for more information). This need has been exploited immensely by today's firms and organisation as they have invested trillions into improving the accessibility and the convenience of their product offerings, making us as consumers and people accustomed to receiving what we want when we want it every single time a need (or want) arises. So do not feel guilty when you want something to happen instantly; you have been trained to be this way with or without your realisation.

How to Improve Your Patience

1. Breathwork

Daily breathwork exercises are one of the critical habits of the worlds top performers, and these people have the foresight and the wisdom to perceive developing situations through a detached lens, meaning that they have trained and controlled their desire to react to a situation impulsively. One of the ways that they have achieved this is through their breathing.

The benefits of breathwork are well documented, and I can attest to its effectiveness in its calming and therapeutic effects. First, find a peaceful place, start breathing deliberately, being careful to pay attention to the depth and length of your breathing. There are many different types of breathwork, but for the sake of simplicity, breathe through your nose for five seconds, then hold for five seconds, then exhale for eight seconds; these timings are a general guide, as long as the exhale is longer than the inhale then you will reap the benefits. One of the best benefits of breathwork is control over emotions; this control will come in handy when faced with a situation that tests our patience.

2. Ask Yourself, Why?

Whenever you find yourself in a hurry or feeling impatient, travel deep within yourself and search for the underlying reason behind your feelings. Why are you in a hurry right now? Why do you think it essential to complete this task so quickly? What led you to this point? What will happen if you do not perform this task in this amount of time? You must determine the cause behind your current state and then mentally formulate a plan to prevent future occurrences of this rushed state. The sooner you begin to practice questioning your hurried instances, the sooner you will become a more composed and calmer individual.

3. Becoming Organised

Most instances of rushing or hurried antics are a direct result of a lack of preparation (see this entry for more on this crucial skill), and a lack of preparation signals either incompetence or a lack of care, for we have failed to adequately assess the needs of our future self and make the necessary preparations to fulfil those needs. Forming a habit whereby you think of what the future 'you' might need and then meeting those needs immediately will save you time and make you calmer. A simple example of this is preparing lunch the night before work, build an awareness of the scenarios the future 'you' will encounter, and you will become more patient because instances of hurried and frantic emotions do not plague the one who is always prepared.