Patience is a practice

“Patience is a practice.” This is what one of my mom’s young caregivers shared with me as one of her most valuable lessons learned earlier in her career, and it has carried her through in every area of her life.

Patience is a practice. I love the poetry in this statement and the flow of the message.

Patience. What a calm word.

Patience is a noun meaning “the ability to wait, or to continue doing something despite difficulties, or to suffer without complaining or becoming annoyed.” Or “calm endurance.” “Self-restraint.”

Patience is a breath, a full inhale and exhale. It’s intentional, a moment, a pause for consideration. Patience is also the reconsideration, a second thought, sometimes a third. It’s a question without judgment.

Patience leads to compassion, understanding, and heart-presence. Yes, patience brings you present. It gets you out of your head and into your body and your heart.

It’s a chance to see—really, truly, see—the person or situation in front of you.

“Patience is not simply the ability to wait—it’s how we behave while we’re waiting.” Joyce Meyer

Patience engages listening. It takes that beat to slow down, to allow room for a solution, a discussion.

Patience is space. Patience makes space for kindness, grace, and love, all wrapped into a moment.

“Power of Presence”

Patience brings inner peace. Being patient with yourself is applying all of the above in those moments of self-judgment, criticism, and yes, impatience. Those moments when you feel yourself tightening up, starting to spin, to unravel. Pause.

“Patience is the greatest of all virtues.” Cato the Elder

Patience is a practice when someone cuts you off in traffic or takes longer on the weight machine you’re waiting for, or when you find yourself biting your tongue to keep from “giving advice,” even when it’s not asked for. Pause for patience, hold, allow the space for them to rise on their own, to finish their own sentence.

Patience leads to reason and allows space for wisdom to rise.

It’s the ability to discern what you can and can’t control. Impatience is fretting over what you can’t control. Patience is understanding and accepting what you can’t and settling into what you can. It’s ease for what you can and grace for what you can’t.

“Pause for patience, my love.”

Try uttering this to yourself in one of those moments and see what happens. Or simply, “Patience.”

It’s an exhale. It’s the sweet calm under pressure. Patience is a practice.

Where are you seeking patience?

Something to think about.

* This post was originally published in my Mindful Moments column (Sun City, Texas).