The Power of Patience

by M J Ryan

  As Iyanla Vanzant discovered, when it comes to being patient with others, the very best thing we can do is engage our compassion. Most of us are doing the best we can, and when we remember that, our hearts open and patience floods in. When we respond from our intellect, we can be very judgmental: she should be like this, he shouldn't be like that. But when we open our hearts, we remember that each of us is an unfinished work of art, a work in progress in the process of becoming.

  The fifteenth-century Christian writer Thomas à Kempis noted this in his famous work, The Imitation of Christ, when he wrote, “Strive to be patient in bearing the defects of others. You yourself have many also, and they have to be put up with by them. If you are not yourself such as you would wish to be, how could you expect to find another according to your liking?”

  It's easy to say we should be compassionate. It's another thing to do it when someone's acting badly toward you. So a great way to put compassion into practice is to step back from the situation and ask yourself three questions my colleague Dawna Markova came up with: (1) If I look at the situation from the other person's perspective, what might he or she be experiencing right now? (2) How would someone I respect put these facts into a different interpretation? (3) If someone I respect did what this person did, would I be feeling differently? If so, how?

  These questions help us open our hearts. That's what Iyanla did on the phone with her son. She had a glimpse of what her son was experiencing and her empathy kicked in.

  Patience and compassion work in unison to support and build on one another. The more patience we have, the more sensitive and responsive to other people's feelings we will be capable of being. And the more we respond with our hearts instead of our heads, the more we tap into the pool of patience that resides in the center of us all.

  TELL YOURSELF YOU HAVE ALL THE TIME YOU NEED

  Life is so short, we should all move more slowly.

  THICH NHAT HANH

  I stumbled onto this idea by accident years ago. I was hurrying to do something or other on a deadline and encountered a roadblock—a computer crash, I believe. Just before I felt my impatience rising, I heard myself saying internally, I don't have time for this. As soon as I thought those words, my physical agitation rose, my heart beat faster, my breathing constricted. But there was a little part of my brain, the witness self, that noticed what had just happened. And that witness began to notice that every time I became impatient, it would start by my saying to myself, I don't have time for this. Each time, that thought would trigger the same reaction: fluster and fear.

  I hated those panicked feelings. So one day, on a lark because I figured I had nothing to lose, I decided to tell myself that I had all the time I needed. I had all the time I needed to do a project regardless of how many times I was interrupted or the computer froze. I had all the time I needed to get somewhere even if I was stuck in traffic. I had all the time I needed to cook dinner even if we had to be out the door by 7 p.m.

  Lo and behold, it worked like a charm. Mostly, I found out, I did have the time I needed. It worked so well that it seemed almost magical, as though time expanded or contracted based on my attitude toward it. On a few occasions, I did run out of time, but I still accomplished more than if I had frightened myself with the time scarcity line.

  I began to realize that scaring ourselves with not having enough time dramatically diminishes our efficiency and ability to perform. The truth is, the more we stay composed under pressure, the more we are actually able to do because we're using our neocortex, the reasoning, rational part of our mind to help us. With reason, not panic, we may be able to figure out how to unjam the computer, juggle the babysitter's schedule, get to the meeting on time. It's a matter of staying calm rather than flipping out.

  Using this self-talk method, I got so much done and was so graceful under pressure that people in my office began to ask me what my secret was. I shared my strategy and other folks began to use it. It worked just as well for them.

  The trick, we discovered, is remembering to do it. Some people put the line on a sticky note and pasted it on their computers. For me, what works best is to stop every time I hear myself saying, I don't have time for this, and replace it with, I have all the time I need.

  Experiment yourself. Notice for a week what happens if you tell yourself you have enough time. Is your life saner, happier? More productive? If it works, great! You've just found a way to do more and feel less stressed.

  DO A RISK ANALYSIS

  When some misfortune threatens, consider seriously and deliberately what is the very worst that could possibly happen. Having looked at this possible misfortune in the face, give yourself sound reasons for thinking that after all it would be no such terrible disaster.

  BERTRAND RUSSELL

  My friend Annette is one of the most even-tempered people I know. I've watched her in many different settings, both social and business, and her serenity is seemingly boundless. It's all the more remarkable because she has a serious kidney disease, which requires daily dialysis. Somehow she manages that and the rest of her life with graceful aplomb. What is the secret to her success? I asked her one day.

  “Well,” she explained, “when I find myself beginning to lose my cool, when the pressure is on, I ask myself, What's the worst possible thing that could happen if I took my time getting through this? Or if it's something out of my control, like a traffic jam, I ask, What's the worst possible thing that could happen if I am late? Or if the plumber doesn't deliver on his promise to come today to fix the toilet? The answer almost always is, Not much. So what if I'm ten minutes late or that I have to find someone else to fix my toilet? I figure the problems that might get created are nothing compared to the aggravation I'd feel if I allowed myself to get all worked up about it.”

  A wise woman, that Annette. Her patience method is very straightforward; she does what in business is called a risk analysis: taking a calculated look at what the risks are and whether she could survive them. What she usually discovers is the same thing that you or I would if we did it, that most likely the risk is minimal. The problem is that under stress we get all worked up and feel as though we are in a life-or-death situation.

  Even in danger, a risk analysis can be useful. Then 24, Ellen MacArthur entered the Vendée Globe, a solo race around the world, against some of the most experienced sailors on the planet. No one expected her to finish.

  Alone, she narrowly missed a row of five icebergs. Both her batten and daggerboard broke, necessitating dangerous repairs. (“It's a pretty horrible feeling when you hear the boat breaking up beneath you,” she reported in her diary about the daggerboard incident.) Just twelve hundred miles from the finish line, a rod holding her mast up broke and her boat was nearly crippled for good.

  With every challenge, Ellen carefully assessed the risks, calculated her options, and patiently made repairs. The results? She came in second, becoming the youngest person and the fastest woman to ever sail solo around the globe, and only the second person in the world to do it in under one hundred days.

  Next time you find yourself all worked up about something, do a risk analysis and notice whether it helps you regain perspective. What is the worst thing that could happen? If you find your temperature rising because you are good at catastrophizing, include the following questions: Realistically, what is the likelihood that the worst thing will happen? If the worst did happen, could you survive it—or even do better as a result?

  Most likely you will discover that the worst is not likely to occur and even if it did, you would somehow make it. And that awareness can give you the breathing room you need.

  KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE PRIZE

  I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.

  MARGARET THATCHER

  In his memoir Nothing Is Impossible, Christopher Reeve writes of his determination to stand again after a fall from a horse in 1995 left him paralyzed from the shoulders down. Not possible, he was told by medical experts,
the spinal cord cannot regenerate; he was lucky to just be alive. But the former Superman set a goal for himself: to stand on his fiftieth birthday in 2002 and toast those who had made it possible for him to do so.

  Christopher Reeve did not stand up for a toast on his birthday. But he did sit on his own and he did move his arms and legs—six years after his spinal cord was supposedly irrevocably severed, proof that the cord had regenerated a little. And he was able to feel light touches and pin pricks, again a sign of spinal cord recovery.

  He accomplished these feats through an incredibly aggressive daily exercise program that required, among other things, massive patience from him and those who assisted him. Patience to do the same grueling exercises over and over, seemingly with no results.

  While he did not reach his target, and indeed died before he could make his dream a reality, I believe the fact that he had a goal made patience—and the progress he did make—possible. Because he had something to work toward that really mattered to him, he could endure all the physical suffering that was required. He kept his eyes on the prize.

  You don't have to be a superhero to do this. As a result of various home remodeling snafus, my friend Karen ended up living in her house for six months without a bathroom. I asked her how she kept her patience. “I just kept remembering my goal, which was to have a beautiful bathroom that I could enjoy for the rest of my life. Every time I would begin to lose it, I would remember the outcome I was aiming for and my patience would kick in again.”

  This technique works well with people too. As Margaret Thatcher reminds us in the opening quote, it is precisely our determination to get what we want that gives us the patience we need to work skillfully with others. If we are not steadfast in our wanting, we can easily give up or blow up. When we are committed to what we want, we have the capacity to put up with the situation because we know in the end it will turn out the way we desire.

  This determination is a mighty force. In a very real way, we are pulled into the future by the strength of our wanting and the power of our patience. That's because, as Robert Fritz points out in The Path of Least Resistance, what we want, if it arises from a state of passion and creativity, doesn't change. It is a stable state, which makes it a powerful magnet for energy to move toward. We don't know how, we don't know when—that's where patience and faith come in—but if we hold our heart's desire strongly enough, we are likely to achieve it.

  As a boy, Ted Williams, the last major league baseball player to hit over .400 in a season, had one goal: “to have people say, ‘There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.’” Shortly before his death, he was nominated to baseball's All-Century Team. As he came onto the field, the announcer's voice rang out: “There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who has ever lived.”

  The next time you find yourself being thwarted in what you want, see if you can use the energy of your frustration to fuel what you want even more strongly. Say to yourself, The more this person or thing gets in my way, the more I will remember what I truly want. Engaging our determination in this way is more than a trick to pass time. It actually increases the odds that our dreams will become reality.

  UNDERWHELM YOURSELF

  I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date. No time to say “Hello,” “Goodbye.” I'm late, I'm late, I'm late.

  THE WHITE RABBIT IN LEWIS CARROLL'S “ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND”

  Sheila and Ted are married with two young children. Ted is a computer programmer who works an hour away from home. Sheila is a nurse who works evenings so that she can be home in the mornings because her son's kindergarten is in the afternoon. Ted leaves for work early so that he can come home at three o'clock when the kids get out of school. Ted and Sheila communicate by notes and don't see each other during waking hours except on weekends.

  “It all works fine, until it doesn't,” Sheila confided to me recently. “School holidays, a kid sick, and the whole thing blows up. I'm always on edge, worrying when it will fall apart next.” Sheila also complains about being constantly impatient with her kids: “They call me the drill sergeant,” she lamented. Is it any wonder? There's no breathing room in their lives.

  While their schedule may be more convoluted than most, Sheila and Ted are not alone in juggling a great deal. We all do. A single mom wrote to me recently that despite her best efforts to be kind and patient, “I find myself practically pushing old ladies aside to get to the subway on time. And I fume at soccer practice when a coach doesn't end the practice exactly on schedule, because I have to race across town to get another kid.”

  Recently I came across a statistic that said that the average American couple is working one hundred hours more a year now than in 1980. One hundred more hours! (And we in the United States work something like four hundred hours more yearly than our European counterparts, who certainly do seem to be more laid back and having more fun.) No wonder we're all strung out and short-tempered. We're doing too much and we're not taking enough time off.

  And despite the simplicity movement, we can't stop. We couldn't stop in the nineties because we were in the midst of an economic boom that we needed to try to get our piece of. Now we can't stop because times are tough and we have to prove our worth or lose our hard-to-get job. Or we have to work full-time at finding a job. Then there are our household duties, the kids' gymnastics lessons, school and church functions. And what about the personal growth we're committed to? Working out? Flossing our teeth? I'm tired just typing the list. No wonder we get impatient with any obstacles in our path.

  That's why one of the ways to have more patience is to, in the words of author Dawna Markova, underwhelm ourselves whenever and wherever possible. Do ten things instead of twenty; take a nap instead of going out; leave for the meeting a half hour early so you don't have to stress over getting there.

  The most patient people I know are those who have plenty of time in their lives for whatever life throws at them—a broken tooth, a flat tire, a sick child. Their lives have enough elasticity in them to accommodate such curveballs and so they can respond with patience and compassion.

  Take a moment right now to think about how you could begin to underwhelm yourself. Think you can't eliminate anything from your list? Try looking at it as choices you've been making, choices that you can change if you want to.

  Sheila saw that she'd been choosing to solve the problem on her own without looking around for other resources. She and Ted ended up inviting his mother to live with them. Now they always have a backup caretaker and driver and Ted, Sheila, and their kids are much more patient—and happy.

  How can you reclaim your life?

  ASK YOURSELF: IS THIS THING STILL FLYING?

  We are all dangling in mid-process between what already happened (which is just a memory) and what might happen (which is only an idea). Now is the only time anything happens. When we are awake in our lives we know what's happening.

  SYLVIA BOORSTEIN

  My husband is a rambling storyteller. Now, I've lived with him for years so you would think I would be used to it by now. Recently he began a story with the words, “I want to tell you something because it could have bad consequences for this business deal you've been putting together.” Before he could finish his sentence, my heart started racing, I went into panic mode and began yelling, “Just tell me right this second! Just tell me right now!” (So much for the practice of patience!) My outburst got him so flustered that it took him a full five minutes to get the story out.

  When I later looked at my reaction and thought about what causes me to lose my patience in general, it often has to do with some fear. Something happens and I become convinced that it will lead to a bad end if it is not dealt with RIGHT NOW!

  That's why I was so attracted to the story I read about former Apollo astronaut Alan Bean. Bean, like most astronauts, had previously been a test pilot and test pilots are trained to ask one question when something goes wrong in the air: “Is this thing still flying?” It's a wa
y of helping the pilot mentally evaluate how serious a problem is rather than panicking so that he or she can calmly come up with a solution.

  That training came in handy, Bean relates, when he was in the Apollo 12 capsule. As the spaceship took off, it was struck by lightning. Suddenly every warning light on the instrument panel flashed, and the astronauts on board felt under tremendous pressure to DO SOMETHING. But then, said Bean, he remembered the question. The spacecraft was not only still flying, but it was still headed in the right direction—to the moon. So he decided not to abort the mission, but patiently dealt with each warning light one by one until all functions were restored. And yes, they successfully made it to the moon.

  Chances are the things that cause you and me to lose patience are not so immediately life-threatening as being in a spaceship struck by lightning. That should make it even more possible for us to stop and ask, “Is this thing still flying?” In other words, am I truly in a life-or-death situation or do I have time to calmly evaluate my options?

  Whether it took my husband one minute or four to tell me his story, I was in no immediate danger. And of course, from a composed place, I could be much better prepared to deal with whatever information he had to convey even if it were terrible news.

  Next time you find yourself out of patience with someone or some situation, try the flying test. It's a great way to restore some much-needed perspective.

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  TWENTY SIMPLE PATIENCE BOOSTERS