“There is more to life than increasing its speed,” noticed Mahatma Gandhi. Meditation shares a profound understanding of how patience disseminates on an individual level and how it also intertwines human interactions.
Nowadays, we do our best to constantly do something, anything, and await for the fruits of our deeds to appear in a blink of an eye. Trees don’t grow overnight, do they? A butterfly’s metamorphosis can take up to one year… Take a look at the nature. In nature, there is no place for impatience. What we can see is a sense of certainty that what needs to happen will happen.
1. Patience is not only the goal, but also the way
Patience is the ability to accept situations that you do not like without becoming angry or upset. Many of us turn to meditation as means to improve the strength of their minds. So, at the beginning of the meditation process, we strive to achieve something, relaxation, calmness, or whatever other expectations we might have from a meditation session. When the first experience does not meet our expectations, we become impatient. When will it happen? Am I doing something wrong? Why do others seem so cheerful and still during when meditating? These are all questions that you might be familiar with. Patience is not something that you magically achieve through meditation. It is a state that you learn to recognise during the very meditation session and also in every conscious moment.
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2. Becoming aware that we are impatient
Take baby steps in noticing when you are impatient. Once you become more and more aware of these relentless thoughts, it means that you are creating a more stable, settled, peaceful mind. Impatience is non-acceptance, wanting to be there where you are not, to have that what you have not, to be that who you are not. It is the annoyed feeling you get when something does not happen as quickly as you want it to or in the way you want it to. Rushing, trying to reach something is just another way of reticence to being present and accepting what is in this very moment.
Being less impatient and more trusting was my experience once I started practising meditation on a daily basis. Patience flows naturally from a clear and calm mind. Trying, in the way of striving, putting effort into becoming more patient might bring you more stress, since you will spend time questioning when you will be more patient, how, why is it not happening, whether it is possible at all. Basically, you will get more involved with your thoughts. Just begin practising meditation – our online self-development program is a great start – and every time you feel you are becoming impatient, breathe it out and repeat the mantra “patience” inside your mind.
Let me know how it works for you.