Patience

No Laughing, Please

This is going to be a fun one! Patience is not a characteristic that I had growing up, or even most of my adult life. It has been a long standing joke how most people in my family had no ability to practice patience – and oh yes, it is something to practice.

In 2000, when the Ten Touch Plan marketing strategy was developed, in describing the plan, the words – Patience, Persistence, and Momentum were what I used to explain the approach. It was one of those flow moments; it just came out and it stuck. To this day, 25 years later, I believe with every ounce of my being that this is the core strategy to achieving anything, and patience is the key.

The Pause

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it.”
– Ferris Bueller

Patience is the pause. It’s the comma, the single moment in time where you catch your breath from the speed of life. Patience is the eye of the storm, the light to lift the fog.

The challenge with patience is that many times, when you need it most, is when it is the hardest to call upon it. You have a jam packed schedule at work, your air conditioner isn’t working and it is 95+ degrees (F) outside, and your friend just called to ask for your support on something they are facing. Patience helps us take that deep breath, pause, and decide how to best handle the situation. By taking that breath, we can give that friend a few minutes of our time, or we can tell them how much we love them and want to be there for them, and schedule a time to talk later, as your mind is scrambled by what you are facing. Both are valid and kind responses, and your patience allows the love to flow.

Applying patience to any situation stops the emotional reactions that come from fear and stress and reminds us of all the other emotions that live on the other side – compassion, kindness, and empathy.

Patience Over Perfection

When you practice patience, you not only give others grace, but you also give yourself grace. Patience is the breath we take when multiple events are hitting at once, and while you know you can handle it, you just need that moment to reset. The drive for perfection can often drive so hard that the idea of pausing or taking a breath feels impossible.

It is in the calm of the moment where patience is the default mode, that everything feels a few percentage points better and possible. Letting go of the “should be doing’s”, “have to be”, and “musts”, that perfectionism plants in our minds – gives patience the space to remind us that wherever we are is OK. That is where the magic of patience really shines. In that pause, things slow down a bit, the situations clear a bit, and all our superpowers come back online (did you do the superpower exercise from the blog on Purpose?).

With our superpowers re-engaged, power rises – the power to keep going, the power to try again, the power to extend love, kindness and understanding to others.

While I was not an all-star at patience earlier in my life, it is becoming one of my favorite power words. When you practice patience, both with yourself and others, magic happens.