A Explanatory Note before we delve in:
Most of you who read my blog know I am a farmer/homesteader, and something that I have noticed over the years is that I don't make plants grow and thrive, they do that themselves. What I do is try to provide the absolute best environment/growing conditions possible for them to do their grow thing in.
Definition courtesy of Oxford Languages
Over the last couple of years, I have really been cultivating my own growth by improving the conditions surrounding myself. Just like I amend the soil in my garden, so I add great things (or missing elements) to my own personal development environment. Every morning I start the day cultivating great, for that is my ultimate goal, and in order to live our absolute best existence, you gotta cultivate your own soil (put the work in) in order to bring out your best.
There’s a lot of different, and super cool, growth ways that I have learned and practice daily. And in the vein of sharing helpful insights and such, here is a bit of cultivated greatness:
This morning I was reading a chapter in Four Thousand Weeks, Time Management For Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. The book itself is a masterful treatise on time management, what time even is, our finitude as humans, etc., and I promise I will review it when I am done reading it, but today's chapter was on patience.
Patience is a superpower! It's also a skill that has to be developed. It is not something that one just has. Although, just like with athleticism, some of us have more skill at it than others.
Me, I have loads of patience. I grew up with a very theatrical father and a mom (who I love dearly) but was ALWAYS late. I also spent untold hours confined to a jump-seat in a Chevy S-10 pickup traveling all over the North American continent as a child in the days before ever-present devices.
Most of all, I had very little agency or control over my own choices, with the exception of the realm of my mind.
So, at a young age I learned the power of flipping the situation.
However, as I have aged and self-actualized a bit, impatience has crept into my realm a touch.
For instance, have you ever been stuck in a traffic jam and honked your horn at someone in front of you, or crowded their bumper? I personally haven't (Seriously, I have only ever honked my horn at another driver twice, and both of the times were to get their attention), however, I have felt annoyance at someone going 45 in a 60 lots of times.
And that's just it. The annoyance is us having an emotional reaction to the fact that we cannot control the unfolding (speed) of our traversement through time. Think about it. Have you ever gotten through traffic faster doing all those impatient annoyed human things? Do they help you feel any better?
One of my personal failings is trying to organize my day so masterfully that I can get through all the hard stuff and then relax. Ugh. This does not work at all, for I always seem to find more things to plug into the to do list, and the relaxing chunk of time I am seeking doesn't materialize.
Four Thousand Weeks goes into the whole concept of finitude, our denial of it, and the whole over-busy time issue thing, so I won't cover that here, for patience is the point of this post, and how to strengthen that skill just like squats build those glutes.
Because the thing is, no one is making you impatient, you choose to lose it. You also have a choice in how you choose to respond. It is literally the one thing we have control over, our reasoned choices.
And if you think I am going to advocate stuffing that feeling of irritation down, think again, I'm all about acknowledgement and reframing! Bottling up your emotions is not going to help cultivate greatness in anyway.
So here it is, three ways I workout my patience muscles:
1. Know thy triggers-Write them down!
Okay, I love lists so I might be predisposed to this one, but putting something down in a list, identifying it, is so helpful in helping you be mindful of what sets you off.
For instance, a few of my patience-threatening triggers are:
- Kids not doing their animal feeding chores correctly so the animals went without and I have to take time out of my day to do it right. GRRRR
- The WIFI going out right when I am trying to get something done.
- People who act in a matter that shows they feel entitled to my time.
Okay, there are more, but the point is, if I am mindful that these behaviors/instances set me off, I can recognize them when they occur and not popoff.
2. Take a few laps in the awareness pool
I know this might sound weird, but sometimes I intentionally do something that frustrates me on purpose. I used to throw discus, and nothing was more frustrating than letting go of the disc mid-spin and hearing it crack into the backstop. Everyone could hear it and knew you blew the throw. Plus, it was frustrating because of all the practice you put in not to do it. However, instead of getting in my head and quitting in an irritated rage, I would just keep practicing again, or even better, go get someone to watch and critique what I was doing. You know, doing the exact opposite of what I wanted to do in the moment, but since I wanted to get better, chose to for growth.
So, look at your trigger(s) list. Find the thing that irritates you, and dive into that situation. However, this time go into it knowing that you are going to flip that impatience monster on its flintlocks. Like He-Man, You have the power!
3. The Countdown
Counting down in order to not lose your patience is a well-known technique. Me being a bit of a weirdo though, I have ad-libbed it a bit. Instead of counting down in sequential order (which is a perfectly awesome technique if that works for you), I have found that if I add some ridiculousness to it, it works even better.
For instance, the other day I saw that my muck boots weren't where I left them, which meant that someone had borrowed them (which is fine) but didn't put them back where they belonged (NOOOO, I hate looking for things that I put away!!!).
My brain pinged! This is it, you are annoyed! You are gonna lose your patience and harpy screech at everyone because you are not in control AHHH!
Instead, I chose to do a mini patience-developing workout and said,
Blue 42, Blue 42, a naked mole rat in a canoe, hut, hut, hike!
My husband looked up from carving a wooden spoon and smirked at me (I say lots of weird non-sensical stuff), and I started giggling. After giggling I noticed that my annoyance had evaporated, because I was alive and having fun. Sure, I was going to talk to my offspring later about putting things back where they got them, but honestly, losing your patience really only causes you unnecessary discomfort, and at the core of it, it's all about you thinking you have control over the unfolding of your time. Becaussseeee:
Impatience is the emotional offspring of hitting the reality that we have no control over our time-line speed limit.
Now, I fail sometimes, I am not perfect, but I have given myself permission to be okay with that. What's more important is that I am trying everyday to learn, and my patience training exercises are an important part in cultivating greatness in my existence so I can thrive!
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's sure wish it had an image of a naked mole rat in a canoe iPhone. The cover image was edited in Canva.