In a more accelerated and stress-laden world, having patience is considered one of the most necessary and valued qualities in a person. Knowing how to manage emotions well and make good use of patience can significantly differ from those who do not know how to be patient. In this article, you will find everything you need to know about patience and how to apply it in your daily routine to begin to notice an improvement in your quality of life. But for this, the first thing is to delve a little more into this concept of patience.
What is patience?
The most successful concept of patience is “the ability to endure something without altering.” It is a quality that helps us not alter our state of mind in case of adversity or waiting for something for a long time.
Another simple and more positive concept of patience is the “ability to know how to wait when you want something.”
How to be a patient person
We can all learn to act calmly and be guided by patience. Some people find it more accessible, and others find it a bit more difficult not to lose their nerves in a situation. But all of them can improve your patience with a few simple methods.
1. Be positive
We can see from many perspectives all the situations that we will face in life. Choosing the most positive one instead of focusing on the bad will improve patience and help you act calmly. Develop a positive mental attitude and you’ll find yourself becoming a more patient person.
2. Know our limits
Even the most patient, every person has a point where the situation overtakes us and leads us to lose our nerves. It’s essential to know yourself and the particularities of your way of being in such a way that we know where that limit is. Once we know how far we can go without losing patience, we can act accordingly and gradually move that limit more and more.
3. Gain confidence
Self-confidence is vital to many aspects of our life. Feeling capable of doing something is essential to achieve it. Something similar happens with having patience. Facing any situation with the security of overcoming it helps us act calmly and not lose our nerves. For example, in a job interview that is running late, having confidence in yourself will help you not lose your temper and wait patiently for your moment to act.
Things that make you lose your patience
Every day we are faced with hundreds of situations that we must face. How we meet all of them and overcome them dictates our personality traits. Of course, one of these essential traits is patience, making a big difference to the bottom line. But it is not easy to maintain patience at times when pushing this quality to the limit. Suffering from stress, anxiety, or being carried away by negativity are some of the most common triggers that can lead us to act impatiently.
1. Stress
It’s one of the significant problems of society in recent times. Within stress itself, work stands as the main generator of stress in the population, making them more prone to lack of patience in all aspects of their lives.
2. Anxiety
It is considered one of the great silent epidemics of the 21st century. A pathology that affects millions of people and that completely changes the way we face everyday life. A person with anxiety has more difficulty coping with certain situations, hasty in making a decision, and loses patience.
3. Negativity
Being positive is one of the crucial requirements when it comes to having patience. The way we approach situations and our attitude to them is essential to achieve the objectives. A negative person will always tend to look for inconveniences and problems in everything, and therefore it will be easier for them to lose patience.
Having patience as an adult
Adults are one of the age groups most in need of mature and robust patience. Adults are one of the groups with more responsibilities, and therefore one of the most exposed to the problems of stress and anxiety.
Work and family are two significant responsibilities for these people, who must work patience to cope with everything. Sometimes, and even more so in adulthood, having patience is confused with a lack of character and a submissive personality.
However, those who manage to control their nerves in stressful situations are much stronger than those who act vehemently in the face of problems. Working on patience in adulthood is expensive since behavior patterns and personality traits are already established in each person.
However, with the force of will, we can achieve good results, and we can become more patient. It is never too late to cultivate patience. Although there is always time to increase patience, the most appropriate time to start working on it is childhood.
How to develop patience in children
Having patience begins to work from the earliest childhood. Children must learn from an early age to tolerate frustration and know how to overcome it through patience.
If they don’t, they could have serious problems coping with the conflicts and setbacks that may arise in the future. It is not easy to work patience in childhood since it is usually marked by impulsiveness and lack of reflection in actions.
Children seek to fulfill their wishes and meet their expectations at all times, so it is difficult for them to understand the concept of having patience and its usefulness. However, it is possible to instill these values little by little in children through certain daily habits. Therefore, leading by example and acting patiently and without losing your temper is essential when working on patience with children.
For example, in a frustrating situation for both of you, such as missing a bus, it’s crucial not to lose your patience in front of the child and calmly seek a solution. An excellent way to combat impatience is to mark some very defined steps so that the child can understand the processes and learn to wait patiently for her objectives. For example, instead of telling a child that he can go out to play “in a while,” it is more effective to structure the action and say: “When we finish this, we can go out to play.”
Learning how to teach meditation to children can also help develop patience in children. It’s not as difficult as you may think and it can be a fun activity for kids.
Having patience as a couple
Reaching a stable relationship with a person can be a great support to face the day-to-day. However, life as a couple also involves a series of conflicts and situations in which having patience is necessary. To improve patience in the couple, the most important thing is to know the other person and their feelings, put yourself in their shoes, and understand their vision.
If we can do it, we will achieve a much more patient and respectful relationship and strengthen our partner’s bonds. To work patiently in love and relationships, positivism again plays a fundamental role. All people have flaws, but having a negative attitude and focusing only on our partner’s failures will lead us to lose patience.
Keeping a positive outlook and valuing our partner’s good things over their flaws will help us improve patience in our relationship. Be proactive and encourage the other person to do the same. Focusing on overcoming obstacles is a guideline that will strengthen your relationship.
In relationships and love is not the only element to take into account when training our patience. Work is another risk factor that seriously jeopardizes this ability.
Having more patience at work
Work is one of the crucial obligations an adult faces throughout his life. We have already explained that work stress affects millions of people and has become a significant problem worldwide. Therefore, it is essential to work patience in the work environment to prevent stress from affecting our performance.
An effective way to do this is by planning tasks and focusing our attention on each of them. If we structure the work to focus on a single task instead of attending to several simultaneously, we will achieve a much more favorable result. Disorder at work can bring us closer to the limit of our patience, and therefore we must try to get away from it. Something similar happens with students, who also face great stress throughout their academic lives and need the patience to cope with their routines.
Having patience when studying
The training stage is one of the fundamental parts of people’s lives, beginning in childhood to completing higher studies before entering the labor market.
In such an important and lengthy phase of our life, it’s necessary to maintain patience and learn to work our abilities to achieve success in our goals. One of the essential things in improving our school patience is learning to tolerate frustration and failure.
In many phases of learning, our brains cannot assimilate all the new concepts that are emerging. In this situation, it is normal for frustration to appear at the inability to understand something. Therefore, an excellent way to cultivate patience is to learn to tolerate this frustration without controlling our emotions.
On many occasions, students’ workload is similar to that of workers, causing them the same stress and anxiety problem. Again, organizing and structuring tasks can be the most effective way to work on patience and deal with it.
Your turn
We already know everything. We need to be patient and act to improve it, but here we offer you a summary of this article. Having patience is one of the essential skills a person can have today. In a society full of stress and anxiety, it is essential to know how to control our emotions and let ourselves be guided by patience when acting.
To start working on having patience, it is essential to maintain a positive attitude and know yourself. As mature people and with established behavior patterns, adults may find it more challenging to work patience and modify their habits. In childhood, patience is a difficult skill to work with. Children are impulsive people who do not understand the meaning of patience, but it can be taught little by little.
Work stress is one of today’s significant problems and a severe risk factor for patience. Improving patience is essential to face work-life successfully and that it does not affect our personal life. Something similar to work occurs in studies due to stress and the high demands that students face.
You already know everything you need to improve your patience. It is time to take action and start practicing the tips that we have explained above.
