Playing the long game of patience

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There are a lot of virtues out there that will indicate an individual is of high moral standard, virtues like morality, righteousness, decency, goodness, respectability and many more of them. But in my opinion, patience is the most crucial of the moral standards, as that rightful application of patience is one that can help one all through the different facets of life. It is important to cultivate the culture of being patient because the importance cannot be overstated, from being patient with your spouse or your partner to being patient with your customer or your client; and being patient with your overbearing roommate.

Good things come to those who wait.

In the world of virtues that we mentioned earlier, patience is notably the quiet one when compared with the others. Because patience is often cultivated behind closed doors, in the cinematic world, we are usually enthralled by characters that display courage, passion, desire and sometimes greed, and interestingly, any movie that tries to portray the character as a patient person will be a major flop or maybe consider boring. But in this life that we live, patience is extremely important.

In the busy and face paced world that we live in today, patience can be considered to be the thin line between tranquillity and annoyance. And we must discipline ourselves to let go of things outside our control.

Patience Starts from Within

You can’t possibly go around dishing patience to the world, without handing yourself a decent plate of patience first. And this means you have to be able to deal with your own emotions and thoughts first, and also managing your state of mental being at all times. When we are patient with ourselves through and through, then we can start being patient with other people, different circumstances and situations. This may sound simple and doable, but the real-life application may be a little harder. Cultivating the art of being patient with ourselves may come in different forms, and in different situations, it may come in a form of dealing with our own shortcomings, and how we react to the external world.

Being patient with oneself can also manifest in managing expectations, and shortcomings, for example, when learning a new skill or when working out with the goal of losing a few pounds of toning up your muscles. In this situation, you need to be extremely patient with yourself, because the desired result is not one that can be achieved with a short period of time, it will most likely take time. And you need patience from when you start this endeavour, in order to see the desired result, hence you have to keep faith in oneself, so patience, in other words, can be described as keeping the faith.

Patience with the World

This is when patience is seen in manifestation because it is an entirely different ball game because we know and trust ourselves, but we don’t entirely feel the same way about the world out there. People of the world think and act in ways that we won’t entirely be in total agreement in, and this sometimes results in conflict and disagreement. And in the world we know, people can act and feel in whatever way they feel like, within the confines with the law. So, it is sometimes difficult to work with people, mainly because of the emotional baggage they bring to the table, and that is when we need a lot of patience.

We have to understand that people come from different backgrounds, and they all have their uniques experiences, which may have stemmed the way they behave and has great influence on their belief system. In most cases, patience from one party is usually the difference, either from your end or from the end of the other person.

References

GreaterGood - Cultivating Patience

Chopra - Patience in Everyday Life