Why You Need Patience and How It Can Benefit You

We live in times where high-speed internet connectivity is the norm and everyone has their very own mobile device. From buying our necessities and luxuries, to ordering in our meals, to watching our favorite movies and shows, to connecting with friends far away. These devices, combined with the internet, allow us to do almost anything in a matter of seconds. While there can’t be any complaints about it from a convenience standpoint, one of the greatest negatives of living in this era of instant gratification is the severe lack of patience.

What is patience and why do you need it?

"Success is the ability to move from one failure to another without loss of enthusiasm." ~Winston Churchill

The definition of patience is simple; the ability to tolerate and accept frustration, suffering, and delay without becoming upset or agitated. However putting it into practice can be difficult, particularly in times where everything is so “instant”.

Lack of patience can have several negative effects on your life. For starters, you may get annoyed or angry if you have to wait for someone or something. You may find it difficult to follow a conversation simply because you find it hard to listen to other people talking. You may become frustrated because the efforts you put into something are not yielding rewards straightaway. All in all, a lack of patience can severely restrict your growth as an individual and can damage both your personal and professional relationships.

That’s why it’s more essential than ever before to work on your patience levels. A patient individual remains calm even in the face of the most challenging situations and can make the trickiest of decisions rationally by weighing all the available options without holding unreasonable and unrealistic expectations.

The benefits of patience building

“A man who masters patience masters everything else.” ~Anonymous

• Healthier living: Patience allows individuals to accept situations that involve waiting. In such situations, impatient people tend to give in to their frustrations and it doesn’t take frustration a long time to transform into anger and subsequently, into stress. Excessive stress may result in long-term physical and mental health conditions such as heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, anxiety, and depression. So, building patience can make you healthier and happier.

• Developing a hardworking attitude: If you’re an ambitious person, you can’t expect your ambitions to be realized if you’re not patient enough. Impatient individuals tend to give up easily, as they expect their desired results to be delivered as soon as they’ve put in some effort. However, patient people understand that it takes time for hard work to show results and as a result of their understanding, they are more persevering in their ways.

• Improved listening skills: Many people in today’s “instant” generation don’t know what it means to listen to someone else. If you want to truly grow as an individual, you have to learn to be accepting of other people’s thoughts, beliefs, and opinions, which involves a fair degree of focus and attentiveness. Not having a good attention span to listen can also jeopardize your relationships. In a professional setting, impatience and inattentiveness can result in incorrect interpretations of instructions.

Tips to become more patient

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.” ~Aristotle

• Practice deep breathing as often as you can, as it soothes the nerves and makes people calm. Shallow breathing, on the other hand, results in heightened stress levels and subsequently, impatience.

• Be conscious in your efforts to become more patient because it won’t happen overnight and it certainly won’t happen automatically. Whenever you start getting worked up over a delay or some sort of frustration, calm yourself down by taking a few deep breaths and tell yourself to stop.

• Learn to do nothing. Impatience often stems from the fact that we’re constantly doing one thing or the other, every waking moment. That’s why so many of us get agitated when there’s waiting involved. It’s not really the waiting that’s annoying; it’s the fact that there’s nothing to do.

“Patience is a virtue” is an adage, but it will always be relevant. You only need to build yours to understand why.