The real face of patience

We are taught that patience is the ability to tolerate waiting but that’s not what it is at all.

In fact, the feeling of tolerating is showing us our impatience, it’s re-enforcing it.

Patience is a side effect of knowing how long something will take, given what needs to happen and the approach currently being used.

Impatience indicates we are wrong in our expectations.

We are either lacking data or we are bad at guessing (as most of us are).

A balance can be found though, we can lose our expectations of how long the project, conversation, learning will take and simply measure how long it is taking.

We can speak to others who have been in the same or similar situations.

We can then harness our impatience, where it can serve us - In finding a better method, or showing us what skill we lack, or need to improve on, or bring in from outside. 

It might sound like a lot of work, just to find patience but without it we quit. We live our lives wired and stressed, we repel friends, family and colleagues. 

Ed Ley