E-Archive

From Editor's Desk

in Vol. 18 - July Issue - Year 2017
Do you have patience?
Andrzej Wojtas

Andrzej Wojtas

According to the dictionary, patience is the following: "The capacity to accept or tolerate delay, difficulty, or annoyance without getting angry or upset."

Nobody's life is free of these three, in fact, in one way or the other, they show up every day. A common reaction to the presence of any one of the three is to get angry or at least upset. However, this response makes an already stressful and unpleasant situation only worse, so one should make a conscious effort to respond to "delay, difficulty, or annoyance" differently. Sometimes there is no other choice but to tolerate their presence and to accept them openheartedly as an inevitable part of life.

You may know some of your triggers already: being put on hold for a long time at work; getting stuck in a long line; struggling to figure out a computer problem; facing an extended wait at the doctor’s office; having to listen to someone take what seems to be an interminably long time to explain something simple.

When this can be done, to tolerate and sometimes even accept delay, difficulty, or annoyance, two things will be noticed. First, being patient is a way of treating yourself with compassion. A person definitely suffers when being impatient, because lack of patience is a stress response to whatever is going on in one’s life.  Therefore, cultivating patience is a way of taking care of oneself.

However, having patience means not just to wait and do nothing. Sometimes there is indeed no choice but just to wait. But very often, waiting alone is not enough. Good things do not come to those who wait. Good things come to those who wait, but who also proactively do something about their situation whilst they are waiting. So if you are simply being passive and patiently waiting for a brighter tomorrow, you need to think twice about your strategy. Patience goes hand in hand with consistent action. It is easy to be patient when you are doing something about your situation because then you are in control, and you are able to determine the progress made despite the seeming lack of tangible results.

Best Regards
Andrzej Wojtas (Ph.D.), Chief Editor of MFN, E-mail: andrzej@mfn.li

Author: Andrzej Wojtas