The waiting is the hardest part

Tom Petty may have been talking about a relationship, but he captures what many of us feel much of the time-impatient! We are frustrated by how much time everything takes, from traffic to long waits on the phone for customer service, to how long it takes our body to heal from an injury.

I remember seeing a sports med doctor a few weeks after an injury, complaining I had “done” the RICE treatment (rest, ice, compression, and elevation) and wasn’t better yet. He laughed and said, people are all the same. They skip a few workouts and expect to be better. When we as doctors say rest, we mean months, not weeks!

In his book Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn describes the foundations, or attitudes, that are considered fundamental for cultivating a mindful approach to life. These attitudes are all interconnected and cultivating these attitudes will deepen your meditation practice in addition to enhancing your energy, creativity, and well-being.

The second of these attitudes is patience.

Mindfulness reminds us that things unfold on their own schedule, not on the schedule our egos demand. Just like we wouldn’t be angry at our garden for not producing flowers or fruit a week after planting, so must we understand that we cannot control how long many other things in our lives take.

Another aspect of impatience is that we often rush through things we deem to be unpleasant in some regard to get to the “good moments.” For example, your week is a blur as you rush to the weekend, or life is a blur as you rush towards a vacation. We are not satisfied with how things are now and feel impatient for them to change for the better.

You often hear someone say, “I’m out of patience!” (parents to kids perhaps). The interesting thing is that patience is an emotion, like happiness or anger. You never hear anyone say, “I’m out of happiness!” Recognize that patience is not like coins in a piggy bank-you can’t run out of it or use it up. It’s a feeling that can be practiced and nurtured-a renewable resource.

Patience is a type of wisdom. Some processes cannot be hurried, including our personal growth and mindfulness path. Jon Kabat-Zinn reminds us, “A child may try to help a butterfly to emerge by breaking open its chrysalis. Usually, the butterfly doesn’t benefit from this. Any adult knows that the butterfly can only emerge in its own time, that the process cannot be hurried.”

Next time you find yourself feeling impatient, stop and notice where it lands in your body. Does your breath change? Do you clench or tighten certain muscles? What thoughts arise? Then see if you can focus on letting those feelings go, like leaves drifting down a stream.

If you want to practice patience with a guided meditation, check out my offering on Insight timer.