What is patience and what does it mean to be patient?
Patience is a quality (virtue) possessed by one who calmly, without upset and anger, endures difficult life circumstances. A patient individual is a person who can accept a difficulty and has enough courage and strength to face it. One of the many sayings about patience is, "Of all the warriors, the strongest are two: time and patience." Patience is often mentioned in the Bible. In it, a patient person is described as one who suffers some trouble but perseveres and struggles having faith in God and some particular goal. And most other religions and world philosophies consider patience to be a sublime and ennobling human trait.
In the Indian religious scriptures it is written "There is no evil worse than anger, nor virtue greater than patience." As well as "In patience there is no anger, in anger there is no patience." Anger is at the root of hurt, aggression and cruelty, towards oneself and towards others. It destroys inner peace, relationships with others, is the cause of unfortunate circumstances in personal relationships, community and society. Anger is extinguished by her awareness, acceptance and constructive expression.
In today’s fast-paced world, it’s easy to get hooked on quick solutions and meeting needs without respecting the natural flow of things that involves delaying satisfaction, perseverance, and patience. Our expectations of quick solutions have quietly crept from the business world into the private spheres, adults, children and youth. The value of time is measured in money, in the achievements that are "on the price" today. We are increasingly prone to getting nervous if things don’t go the desired course or speed. Then we show typical signs of impatience: "we lose our temper", we get angry and become intolerant.
We perceive impatient people as nervous, impulsive, insensitive, arrogant people, often not noticing how often we are like that ourselves. Instead of allowing us to do more work in less time and get more time for vacation, family, hobbies, etc., modern technology has imposed new patterns on us and erased the boundaries of professional and private time. Additionally burdened, we fail to reconcile the irreconcilable and thus undermine our health, relationships, life satisfaction.
The reasons we become impatient are not outside of us as much as it seemed the opposite. (In) patience is always a choice. If we become aware of the situations that are our "triggers" and if we think about them, we are one step closer to managing ourselves in any circumstances, instead of the circumstances controlling us. A good motive for working on patience is a number of advantages enjoyed by a patient: less stress, greater focus, better and better relationships with yourself and others, increased life satisfaction, better health, peace of mind, composure, development of empathy, making smarter and wiser decisions. conflict management, etc. Cultivating this trait requires perseverance and time.
Being patient does not mean being passive, resigned, waiting. Exactly the opposite. Patience involves procrastination and thinking and deciding when and how to act. A patient man is not impulsive. Patience implies a certain level of self-control, discipline, not in terms of discipline, order, obedience, or the habit of obeying a certain order but an internal, self-centered one. T. Berry Brazelton, in his book "Discipline: Brazelton's Approach" explains nicely: "Discipline is, after love, the most important gift a parent can give a child. The essence of discipline is learning, not punishment. Discipline is a long-term process in which the child is helped to develop self-control, but by structuring consistent, considerate boundaries and rules, parents help the child to form internal standards that will benefit him throughout life.
A patient man enjoys the journey to the goal. Without patience there is no progress, no real progress in life, in private life and at work. Problems with (impatience) bring new problems, go hand in hand with difficulties with relaxing and slowing down the pace or managing it. For everything we do in life we should try to find a measured speed. It means finding your own speed, your own pace, the one at which we feel good, in balance, focused. We can practice this by practicing patience in everyday situations (okay in the store, in a column at a traffic light) and introducing activities such as reading a book, gardening, fishing, walking, meditation or prayer, practicing yoga, active listening, mindfulness and the like.
Adopting and practicing patience, as well as other good habits, does not go easily overnight. Do you need to have patience to practice patience ?! It sounds contradictory, but it's not. Exercise in this case also makes a master.
Patience is a very good trait to have. It teaches us to handle life from a very wise point of view.