What Can You Do When You Notice You're Getting Impatient?

For some people, it is already an imposition when they stand in front of the microwave and wait for the five minutes it takes to warm up the leftovers from yesterday to be over.

Before you laugh about it, ask yourself if these things haven't happened to you already. Have you never looked impatiently at your watch when the bus was late? Have you never cursed at your computer because it takes too long to boot up?

I think most of us have that kind of everyday impatience.

But you can also be impatient with yourself, and this is the much more harmful form of impatience.

Some of us tend to judge ourselves harder than others. We demand that we do our work quickly to have more time for more work.

But the side effects of impatience slow us down even more. Those who are impatient with themselves put themselves under psychological pressure. We become nervous, unfocused, and hectic. All this leads to an increase in our error rate, and in the end, we need much more time for our task.

So it is evident that impatience hurts - especially impatience with ourselves.

Unfortunately, it doesn't help us just to know it. We need strategies that lead us out of the vicious circle of impatience.

The vicious circle looks something like this: We have the feeling that we are moving too slowly in a task, then we put ourselves under pressure, which makes us make more mistakes and takes even longer, which leads to even more impatience.

So what can we do when we notice that we are getting impatient and are hurting ourselves?

Accept that you are impatient

If you notice that you are getting impatient, you should not be angry about it. You are already mad about the thing that is causing your impatience. There is no need to create even more stress than you already have.

Do not see it as an urgent task to overcome your impatience. Just accept that you are impatient right now. Do not judge this state at first.

Instead, observe what impatience is doing to you. Is your heart beating faster? Are your muscles tense? Are you breathing shallowly? Collect these impressions and realize that it is your impatience that causes these symptoms.

Ask yourself if you can speed up what is making you impatient at all

Some things take an hour, no matter what we do. A red light is programmed to run for a specific time interval, which we cannot change. If we get stuck in traffic, there's nothing we can do about it.

But even in our work, there are processes that we should not or cannot shorten.

Impatience often arises from the awareness that something is beyond our control. Make yourself aware of this. And then realize that while you cannot change things, at least your reaction to it can.

Just as you must first accept your impatience, you must also recognize that some things simply cannot be accelerated. When you realize that it is not your fault that things go too slowly, it is easier to turn impatience into serenity.

Ask yourself what a patient person would do in your place

I'm sure you know someone who's particularly patient. Patient people are not as rare as we think. I'm sure if you think for a few minutes you can think of someone who has that virtue.

Now, when you find yourself in a situation that makes you impatient, think of this friend. You will have experienced this person many times in cases that would have driven you crazy. But this person reacted quite differently than you would have done.

How would he react in your situation? Would he also drum nervously on the steering wheel if he was stuck in a traffic jam, and a critical appointment threatened to be canceled? Or would he pick up the phone and calmly explain to his business partner why he will be late and maybe make a few funny remarks about the traffic jam?

Can you try to do it like this friend? Just try it. You have nothing to lose but a lot to gain.

A warning at the end: Do not confuse patience with passivity

When I plead for more patience in life, I don't mean that we should let everything pass passively over us.

It is easily possible to get better organized and complete a task in half the time without worsening the result. Whenever you can do that, do it.

There is no reason to tell yourself that you do not influence at all on the world.

Patience does not mean letting everything just happen. Patience can free us. In the long run, passivity does precisely the opposite.