The Power of Patience

by M J Ryan

  Once you discover your pattern of success, you can use it in situations that normally try your patience. For instance, I now engage my patience better when I'm waiting by framing the experience as an opportunity to foster my own growth. When dealing with his kids, which is where Bob often lost his patience, he began bringing to mind a picture of a happy outcome as soon as his blood began to boil. As a consequence, he didn't lose his patience at home nearly as often.

  You are patient. By seeing where and how, you can learn to access your patience when you need it most.

  KNOW YOUR IMPATIENCE TRIGGERS

  Patience . . . is cultivated through the rational process of analysis. . . . It is essential that we begin our training in patience calmly, not while experiencing anger.

  THE DALAI LAMA

  My father was a mild-mannered soul. Most of the time, that is. And I was a good kid, who only wanted to please him. Most of the time, I did. But every once in a while, he would lose all patience with me. He'd grit his teeth and his jaw would bulge and he would speak to me in a low growl. My terrible offense? Brushing my teeth outside of the bathroom!

  I was reminded of that the other day when the mother of a friend of Ana's told me that mornings were the worst time for her when it came to being patient with her three kids. “I don't know why,” she confided, “perhaps it's the pressure to get everyone out the door on time, but I lose it almost every morning.”

  That got me thinking about when I lose patience most easily. Waiting in line immediately pops to mind. But the other danger zones for me are mechanical objects. The person who came up with the phrase “all thumbs” had me in mind when he or she coined the term. Doing anything with my hands is incredibly challenging. This has always been true. When I had to learn to sew in home ec in junior high, my sister would leave the house when she saw the sewing machine being hauled out.

  Even now, I embody the term “helpless female” when it comes to anything that requires hand-eye coordination or mechanical ability. When I cook, which I love to do, I veto any recipe that requires too much intricate rolling or stuffing or I'm likely to end up throwing a chicken breast across the kitchen.

  What are your impatience triggers? They are different for each of us. For my mother, it's visual chaos: piles of toys left around, clothes on the floor, unmade beds. For my husband, it's being interrupted by Ana when he's trying to tell me something. For my friend Debra, it's voice mail loops where you can't ever get to a real person. Right now, take a couple minutes to note, in writing or in your mind, when and where you tend to be the most impatient.

  When we bring to our awareness exactly what it is that causes us to “lose it,” we increase our options of response. But only if we do not judge ourselves. If we tell ourselves that we are bad for being impatient when someone is speaking slowly, or for snapping at our kids, we will not change. In fact, there's a boomerang effect in which the behavior gets more firmly entrenched: we do it, then we beat ourselves up for doing it, then we do it even more. But if we can bring curiosity to our noticing—Oh, I really do go nuts every morning, isn't that interesting; I wonder what I can do about that—we can come up with better alternatives.

  Take a look at your list. Is there something you can do to work around what's hardest for you? Or if it's unavoidable, can you offer yourself compassion for how hard it is? I once heard someone say, “I'm doing as good a job at this as I can now. If I could do better, I would.” What loving self-talk; she told herself the truth, and acknowledged she wanted to improve, all without bashing herself!

  As for me and my bumbling, I've learned to unabashedly pass things over to my husband or, increasingly, my very handy child. When I must do something mechanical on my own, I remind myself that this is difficult for me, and therefore gain a bit more patience with the situation. And I haven't been near a sewing machine in thirty-five years.

  LEARN YOUR EARLY-WARNING SIGNS

  Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.

  HENRY J. KAISER

  I was on the phone with Cynthia. She was talking about how she seems to go along just fine and then suddenly, out of nowhere, she loses her patience. “One minute I'm fine and the next, I am a harridan. I seem to get no warning I'm about to blow,” she lamented.

  Impatience often feels like that, a sudden summer squall that comes up out of nowhere in the midst of a peaceful sky-blue day. Once we lose it, there's not a whole lot to do except try to inflict as little damage as possible, and treat ourselves and those around us as kindly as possible after the fact. (Apologies work well too.)

  But there are indicators that we are about to blow, we're just not aware of them. Sports psychologist Gary Mack calls them early-warning signs, like the red indicator lights on your car. It's really not happening out of the blue, although it may feel that way. We're doing something to tip ourselves in that direction.

  For some of us, it might be something we say to ourselves, like, I can't stand this anymore. For others, it may be a scary picture of getting hurt. For still others, it is the feeling of holding our breath or of our heart racing.

  Step one is to begin to notice what your sign is. For me, it's definitely a phrase in my head, something like, I'm not going to put up with this anymore. For you it might be completely different. Be gentle with yourself as you explore. You are bringing to awareness something that is operating below your level of ordinary attention. The best way to explore is, after an impatience episode, to track back to what happened inside you just before you lost it.

  Once you discover your early-warning sign, try the second step. Do something different. Stand up or begin to doodle. Sing a silly song in your head. When you interrupt the program that usually runs you from patience to impatience, you increase the possibility of remaining calm.

  When Cynthia tried this, at first she couldn't identify her early-warning sign. But by paying close attention a few times, she realized that she made a scary movie in her mind just before she snapped. She started singing to herself “You Are My Sunshine” when the movie started. It worked!

  Study your early-warning signs and try something different the next time the “red light” comes on. That way the squalls of impatience won't take you by surprise. They might just roll out to sea without you.

  TAKE A BREATHER

  Nothing is more effective than a deep, slow inhale and release for surrendering what you can't control and focusing again on what is right in front of you.

  OPRAH WINFREY

  Gary Mack works with professional athletes, helping them to maximize their performance. In his book, Mind Gym, he, like Oprah Winfrey, touts the power of conscious breathing to focus and calm the mind. To make this real, he first puts athletes through what he calls the “breathless exercise.”

  “First I tell the group that this is a contest. I am going to watch each of them and judge everyone's performance carefully. Then I begin barking verbal commands. ‘Look left . . . look right . . . look left . . . look right, look right . . . look right . . .’ As they continue the task, their anxiety increases. Their breathing pattern changes. Without realizing it, many hold their breath.” He then goes on to teach them to breathe consciously under stress.

  I don't know about you, but much of my life seems like Mack's breathless exercise: look here, no here, no here. Constantly attending, constantly trying to keep up. Could something as easy as taking a few breaths boost my patience and increase my peace of mind? The answer, I've discovered, is yes. A few breaths, or more accurately, a few conscious breaths, since we are breathing all the time, gives us a split second to recall what's really important in the situation, rather than just reacting on impulse.

  Breathing with awareness also helps us tune in to our bodies and notice what is going on internally. Patience and impatience are not just ideas in our minds, but also sensations in our bodies. We each have our own words for those sensations. To me, patience is a feeling of calm groundedness, a rooted, expansive feeling of well-being, while impatience is a jittery, f
lustered, off-balance sensation.

  When we become aware of the sensation of impatience in our bodies, we can use our breath to come back to patience by slowing the inhales and exhales a bit. This signals our nervous system to begin the relaxation response. In as little as a minute, our shoulders relax, muscles loosen, blood pressure drops, and our heart beats a bit slower. From this physically calmer place, we are able to respond more effectively because we have access to all of our emotional and mental resources.

  There are many ways to do calming breathing. In a stress-reduction report issued by the Harvard Medical School, there is a technique that can be done in less than a minute. It is particularly effective because it combines breathing with touch, which has also been found to be soothing.

  Put one hand on your belly, just under your belly button. Breathe in, feeling your abdomen inflate. Hold for the count of three, then breathe out, feeling your abdomen deflate. Hold for the count of three. Repeat until you feel calmer.

  You can use this technique anywhere, anytime—under the pressure of a deadline when your computer suddenly goes on the blink; when the kids are rubbing on your last nerve; when you're worried about getting somewhere on time. You can encourage your family and friends to do it when their patience wears thin as well.

  I can't encourage you enough to try this patience formula. It is simply the best way we humans have of regrouping quickly. As Thich Nhat Hanh promises, “It needs only one conscious breath to be back in contact with yourself and everything around you, and three conscious breaths to maintain that contact.” No matter how busy we are, we all have time for that!

  CLIMB DOWN TO THE BASE OF THE TREE

  When the crowded refugee boats met with storms or pirates, if everyone panicked, all would be lost. But if even one person remained calm and centered, it was enough. They showed the way for everyone to survive.

  THICH NHAT HANH

  Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh is from Vietnam. In his young adulthood, virtually everyone he loved in his country—his family, his fellow monks, the children in the orphanages he founded—died in the war. Yet he is one of the most peaceful and happy human beings you could ever come across. That's because, he says, peace can be found in every moment, even when life seems the most challenging.

  One of the best ways to find peace is to get out of your head and into your body. Hanh likens it to being a tree in a strong storm. If the wind is raging and you are at the top of the tree, you will be tossed around violently. Climb down to the sturdy trunk and you will barely feel any movement whatsoever.

  How do you get to the base of the tree? One way is by centering. Like mindful breathing, centering is a physical way of being fully present in the moment, with mind and body in harmony. From that place of rooted calmness, you are much better able to cope patiently with whatever is going on outside you, even if pirates are boarding your boat.

  Centering, the base practice in the martial art of Aikido, has been one of the most useful techniques I've learned in cultivating patience. Here's the most dramatic example. From the first night we adopted Ana, she would awaken each evening, screaming. Once, twice, five times a night for almost four years, she would wake, hysterically crying and kicking, for as long as fifteen minutes at a time. She wasn't really awake; experts call the phenomenon night terrors.

  In Ana's case, I believe they were a result of her abandonment as an infant. There was nothing we could do except hold her and tell her she was safe until she fell back into sound sleep. As she got bigger, it became impossible to hold her because her thrashing was so strong. All Don and I could do was sit next to her, tell her she was safe, and not abandon her again.

  As any parent knows, as any compassionate person knows, it's very hard to watch a person in obvious agony and do nothing. In the beginning, I would get very agitated by just sitting. Then one day, I remembered I could center.

  It was remarkably effective. I was able to stay fully present with her for as long as it took for her to calm down, without losing my patience, night after night, month after month, until she no longer woke up.

  It worked for other things as well. I used it when she hit her terrible twos and would throw herself on the ground in a tantrum. I would center and say, “I see you are really frustrated. I am sorry you're so upset” without losing my cool. Because I was able to be present without getting caught up in her attempts to manipulate me, her tantrums soon stopped.

  Now I use it any time someone comes at me with strong energy—frustration, upset, fear. It's automatic. I feel myself centering and from that place am able to respond in a way that is healthier for me and the other person.

  So how do you center? I do it by bringing attention to my belly and imagine myself encircled by a sphere of energy about a hand-span away from my body, including under my feet. Some people center by remembering what really matters to them, others by imagining their golf stance. Women sometimes think of their wombs. Anything that brings your center of gravity to your belly works.

  To practice, try one of the techniques described above. Then, when you are ready, have someone gently push you on your shoulder and try to knock you over. If you are off-center, a gentle push will cause you to move. If you're centered, you are virtually immovable.

  Center is not a place you find once and for all. You—and I—will find and lose it over and over again. But the more we practice, the easier it will be to find and the more instinctive it will be in times of need. Practice when you don't need to, with a willing but not too aggressive partner. The idea is not for you to land on the floor, but to get a sense of the feeling of centering.

  After doing it a dozen times or so till it feels right (you'll know), try it when you feel your thermostat rising. Are you more patient and effective when you center? What helps you to do it? What helps you to remember to try it when your patience starts to fray?

  Firmly rooted in the base of the tree of your being, you are much better able to cope with the storms that others bring your way.

  ROAD SAGE, NOT ROAD RAGE

  He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty. And he who rules his spirit, than he who takes a city.

  PROVERBS 16:32

  In her audiotape Road Sage, Sylvia Boorstein tells of a limo driver with whom she was once caught in a traffic jam on the way to an appearance on a live TV program. He worked for the station and so knew how important it was to get her there on time. But he never lost his composure, even though they were barely moving. And he did get her there on time. When she asked him about his capacity to be at ease despite the nerve-racking circumstances he found himself in each day, he explained, “What I'm doing could be a headache for me if I let it be.”

  This driver knew something that many of us need to remember: we have a choice in how we respond to the situations we find ourselves in. For most of us, those circumstances involve huge amounts of time on clogged highways and byways. Each day, like the wise limo driver, we have a choice to panic over being late and get furious at other drivers, or relax and enjoy the ride, slow as it is.

  More and more frequently, we are choosing the former option. The American Automobile Association (AAA) reports that aggressive driving is a factor in two-thirds of all accidents, while the California Highway Patrol reports that, in the San Francisco Bay Area, they receive four or five road rage complaints per hour during the commuting period.

  It's not that people don't have provocation; there is a direct relationship between how crowded the road is and how aggressive drivers become. But there's another reason why road rage is so prevalent: it's an anonymous way to get our frustration out about other things. You know the old cartoon where the guy comes in from a hard day at work and yells at his wife, who yells at the kids, who kick the dog? The psychological term is “displacement.” Rather than letting out your feelings at the person or situation that is actually troubling you, you vent on someone “safer.”

  Whatever the reasons, because we spend so much time in cars, commuting is the perfect tim
e to practice patience. Patience means we don't cause accidents by weaving in and out of traffic, following too closely, or cutting other vehicles off. And when other drivers do behave badly toward us, patience lets us avoid a confrontation that could lead to no good.

  Whether an aggressive driver or simply a line of unmoving cars is confronting you, it helps to consciously relax your body, particularly your hands on the steering wheel. Look around at the scenery, find a great station on the radio, listen to books on tape.

  I always have to remind myself that I can live through being late because I tend to go into a tizzy about not being punctual. I got some help in that regard once when I was an hour late to a lawyer who charged $350 per hour. The whole drive I fretted about the money and what he would think of me. When I got there, he told me that the initial consultation was free and that my being late allowed him to get some needed work done. Now when I'm running late, I reassure myself by hoping for that kind of response again.

  Notice the difference it makes in your trip and in how you feel when you arrive when you decide to play it cool.

  ISSUE A STORM WARNING TO CHILDREN

  Me: “Ana, I'm losing my patience.” Ana (age three): “Don't worry Mama, I still have some.”

  I don't know about you, but one of the most difficult things for me about being a child was that I would be going along my merry way when all of a sudden, the adult in charge would be furious with me, and I would be yelled at, spanked, or sent to my room without any warning that I had exceeded the patience zone. Enduring my punishment, I vowed that I would never treat a child of mine that way. And I haven't.