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4 Ways To Improve Your Patience With Others
They say that patience is a virtue and we should all be working towards gaining more of it, but in this day and age of speed and instant gratification, it becomes one of the most difficult behaviors to obtain. With the push of a button, we can send an email so why should we write or wait for a mailed letter? We start our children in sports at such a young age with expectations of greatness by age four.
I remember my daughter, Jenna, stepping onto the school bus for her first day of Kindergarten with such hope and promise only to show me a sad face when she returned three hours later. When I asked why she looked so sad, she replied, "But Mommy, I didn't learn how to read yet." While society and our environment seem to prevent us from gaining more patience with each other, I offer four tips below that I hope will help you get on the right path:
- Make sure you are clear in the expectations you want up front. When waiting for a report from a co-worker, or a teenager to take out the garbage, sometimes we can lose patience because we don't think the other person "gets" our sense of urgency. By being upfront and as clear as possible in what you are expecting from them, your chances for successes increase, i.e., I will need that report by Friday at 3 PM so that our customer can give us an answer.
- Decide if the delay is out of your control. In order to discern if you need to take any additional action when you are feeling impatient, think of what author John Miller wrote in his book QBQ: The Question Behind The Question. The two questions are...what can I do to improve the situation or how can I improve the situation? It puts the responsibility on you to see if there is anything else you could do versus blaming the other party first.
- Take a deep breath and uncover your trigger points. If there is nothing else you can do to help change a situation, begin paying attention to your body with deep breaths that will improve your mood. I once read an acronym called HALT that really helped me better understand why I would get impatient. Each letter of the acronym shows a potential reason for impatience. H is for hunger, A is for angry, L is for lonely and T is for tired. I look to these four reasons as a great starting point to taking care of myself so I gain perspective and patience. You may need to write down when you become most impatient and irritable with others in order to see a pattern emerge.
- Distract Yourself. As a young parent, I learned this great trick with my young daughters when they were determined to scream and cry if they did not get what they wanted. I would quickly distract them with a different toy or environment so they would forget the reason for their unhappiness. Sadly, the truth is, this technique works well with adults too! By keeping the bigger picture in mind, you may find other steps that need completion, and therefore take your mind off the pieces that are not getting done, but will, if you wait a little longer.
Question for You:
Do you find yourself getting more easily irritated with yourself and others when you are not getting what you want?
Action for You:
By making sure your expectations are clear for the other person, you have taken full responsibility for the situation at hand, know your trigger points for impatience and learn how to distract yourself, you will begin gaining more patience for yourself, co-workers and your family.
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