Patience is something that many of us struggle with. I know that I am certainly one who has a hard time dealing with delays. After all, we live in a world of instant gratification and overnight shipping. We can have anything that we want delivered to our doorstep right away. We can pick from a variety of entertainment options at any given moment. As a result, being patient has become increasingly difficult for most of us, and understandably so.
The truth of the matter is, however, that anything good rarely happens quickly. It usually takes a lot of work and a long wait. You have to know that going in and work on your inner resolve to wait it out. This applies to a number of things: launching a business, waiting to go to an event, or striving to achieve your personal goals and milestones.
Here are a few tips that you can leverage to help you increase your patience:
- Make yourself wait on things. This can include eating, purchasing items, or taking any sort of action. Work to overcome whatever makes you anxious and force yourself to wait. It will help you to increase your current patience levels and become less anxious moving forward. Try it.
- Avoid instant gratification. Take a pause before indulging in anything- like a dessert or other indulgances. Instant gratification is actually bad for us in so many ways.
- Look for triggers. Assess what tries your patience and employ self-talk to get you through. You might even come up with a mantra to this end like “I can wait” or “Waiting is good for me.” Get creative with yours.
- Teach yourself to look on the bright side of delays. Sometimes that pause actually has a silver lining. Perhaps you’ll meet a lot of wonderful people while waiting in line, or the timing of when something does unfold is actually better in the future. Learn to look for that bright side regularly, and you’ll start to become aware of the importance of having things happen when the time is right.
- Understand that life is full of zigzags and delays (and that’s okay- and even to be expected). There is no one straight path to happiness or success. If there were, we would all take it. Ups and downs are what build character, and often, the longer we wait, the more we enjoy it. So wait it out with the best of them.
Growing your patience can be challenging, but if you start to incorporate these tips into your life, you’ll find yourself happily waiting in no time at all!