Have you ever played a waiting game? People sometimes do it in their relationships. Teams sometimes do it during periods of the ‘game’. Have you ever consciously decided not to hurry something, somehow knowing, deep within, that everything will happen in the right way at the right time? The older, and mellower amongst us tend to do it. Have you ever decided not to rush somewhere realizing you cannot make yourself arrive faster than your mode of transport, and you cannot control what gets in the way? Bus drivers learn to do it. Even in the midst of a grand priz, racing drivers have to do it.

Patience is one of those virtues, which can transform a moment of high anxiety into quiet relaxation, a rush of mental agitation into the smooth flowing river that life can be. In the presence of a patient person we are surrounded by an aura of calm as we are pulled into the tranquil light of their unhurriedness. Even when they are busy, the quality of their busy-ness still radiates patience. Perhaps they heard Emerson’s advice to, “Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience”. Nature is almost always patiently busy, either visibly or invisibly.

In a recent survey by a national newspaper they set out to discover why levels of anger were rising in the world. They found the main underlying cause was not having one’s expectations and desires fulfilled… fast enough! In other words, impatience with events, with governments, with other people and with delivery services, are the new variants of ‘hurry sickness’. Perhaps it’s not surprising considering the speed of modern life. The email addict is always looking for the next opportunity to access their inbox.

While most people might admit to being impatient in some area of their life, not many know how to free themselves from their quickening anxieties. Many, if not most, would probably say that they would rather not be so impatient, that they do want to be more patient, but the only problem is they want it now! Obviously restoring a little more patience to your life will require some … patience!

So how can you be more patient? Can you just become a patient person? Can patience be a permanent thread woven through your personality? How do you create patience?

Visualization
Being patient is a creative process. It involves bringing together a variety of ingredients in an initial process of visualization. The first step is to admit and acknowledge your impatient trait is entirely your own creation. It’s not the late train or failing delivery service, it’s you that makes you impatient. You have created and sustained the ‘trait’, so you can create and sustain patience. And like all your other creations the process begins on the screen of your mind. That is where you conceive, believe and achieve patience ‘in rehearsal’, before you step onto the stage. That’s where you create both the image and feeling of being patient. To do that, you will need to draw on a variety of inner resources.

Peace
The first resource is a ‘felt inner peace’. This is the peace of your heart, the peace that can never be taken from you, but which you can lose awareness of. Peace is the foundation energy of patience. If you cannot draw on your inner peace, patience will be almost impossible. Meditation is the journey of no distance in one second into your spiritual heart (the heart of your consciousness) and an unlimited supply of pure peace.

Acceptance
Your inner peace can only travel from your heart to your mind when you no longer want to change what is. The moment you accept everyone and everything as you find them, without any resistance, is the moment the power of love, your love, you, are able to embrace life in its totality, as it is. That alone is quite a challenge for many of us as we have a tendency to spend too much time and energy in our minds. It’s there that we judge others and ‘fix’ the problems of the world, under the illusion that it’s our job, and that we can!

Contentment
Your peace and your acceptance are like two primary colors which, when mixed together, create contentment. You cannot be patient unless you are content in your self, with your self and with the world, in this moment now. This also requires the realisation that there is only now. Only then will all attempts to escape into the future or hide in the past, come to an end.

Faith
Only in this still, quiet, yet dynamic state of contentment, which is not passive or submissive, but alert and available, can you hear and feel the wisdom that comes from the truth that you already hold deep in your heart. Intuitively you now know all is well and all will be well. Your faith in life emerges as an intuitive knowingness that, in the words of that now famous and well circulated text called Desiderata, “all is unfolding exactly as it should”.

Freedom
Only once you are at peace, with the capacity accept, contented, and with a faith in life that has no opposite, can you ‘see’ and realize you no longer need to get something from outside yourself. This marks the end of desire, the death of craving (for anything) and the restoration of true spiritual freedom. Nothing need be sought, for everything is already present within the self. In that moment all impatience is seen for what it is, a temporary lack of faith in the universe, in life, in the self. Impatience is the absence of the faith, the confidence, that life will show up with exactly what you need when you need it to simply live.

Intention
The realization of this, the deepest freedom, signals the end of the slavery to ‘wanting’ and there is the transformation of intention. You now know all that you ever needed is already within you. Life ceases to be about waiting impatiently for what you want or expect, and starts to be focused around giving what you have. Every moment is seen as an opportunity to be ‘the giver’ of the energy of your life. Not as a sacrifice or as an obligation, but as a gift. Time, attention, guidance, warmth, acceptance and many other forms, all become the real gifts, the true gifts, which require no expenditure and no packaging.

Impatience makes us ‘a patient’ in life. It means one of the above ingredients is temporarily missing. Each ingredient is always present within our being, but they are temporarily lost to our awareness. Until your patience is restored, life itself is a healing process. Each moment you attempt to force an outcome, each moment of anxious waiting or expectant desire, is simply deepening a wound that will eventually require the balm of peace and the acceptance that comes from love.

Perhaps the most valuable application of the virtue patience is its ability to bring wisdom back to life. In most western cultures, when things appear to be going wrong, we have the tendency to shout, “Don’t just sit there, do something!” Whereas, in the ancient east there was the tendency to whisper, “Don’t just do something, sit there.” In such moments we are acknowledging the need to allow a deeper wisdom to inform our responses, and not allow knee jerk reactions to rule our minds and hearts. Wisdom however, does not appear in the auditorium of our consciousness on demand. An invitation must be sent to our heart, and then a patient wait is required before a reply is received. Perhaps this is why the wise and the patient know that patience and wisdom are both the best of friends and inseparable companions. Perhaps this is why the farmer’s wisdom is patience itself, and the gardener’s patience is wisdom in itself.

Question: In what areas of your life are you currently impatient and why?

Reflection: Which of the above seven ingredients of patience do you think are missing most (rate each on a scale of one to ten).

Action: Take each one of the above on separate day during this coming week and contemplate it, reflect on it, explore its meaning and see what it awakens, shifts and heals within you.