God grant us patience! William Shakespeare
Just visualize the scene where as a family we are sitting in a restaurant and debating what to order. We take our time about ordering the food, since most of us take an eternity to make up our minds. Finally when we give the order to the captain, we have this compulsive urge to instruct him to ensure that the food is served fast. While we dilly dally about our choice of food, we have no patience to wait for the food to be served. In a day and age where instant coffee and instant noodles are standard fare, where pizza delivery is timed in a clock work fashion and where ‘please hurry up’ is a standard appendage to any request, the virtue of patience is at a very high premium.
Contrast this with natures wonder called life cycle. It still takes 9 months from conception to delivery for a human being. If you plant a seed today, it might take years for someone to be able to enjoy the fruits of the tree. Look at the wild animals patiently stalking their prey or imagine the patience of the migratory birds for they have to fly very very long distances which take days on end. This phenomenon opens our eyes to a very critical weakness in most of us living in the fast paced world- lack of patience. You may disagree and say you are very patient and perhaps you are right too. If you are still reading this post, give yourself a clap for your patience; for the net speed may have been too slow and yet you persisted or the contents up to this point may have tested your patience but you optimistically go on.
On the other hand, examine your own investment strategy. Do you believe in quick money and indulge in daily trading in the stock markets or regularly buying the lottery or gambling? On the other hand are you a long term investor and / or do you prefer slow and steady returns as in bonds and debt markets? Examine your own tastes in music and sports. Do you prefer the classics to rap and metal music? Do you like to watch golf or F1 racing or prefer tennis to a football match? No doubt the choice is based on your personal interests and factors other than just your patience level, but it may give you a clue to your personal operating style which could have patience as dominating variable.
When we get impatient we also get irrational. We are then overpowered by irritation, annoyance and get easily provoked. That is when we attempt to speed up decisions leading to poor decision making, try to short circuit the system and end up messing things up and often lose our bearings and consequentially end up looking foolish and stupid. Worse still, impatience makes us lose time for in our hurry we botch up things and setting that right almost invariably takes double the original time frame. Patience is a virtue that will bring us peace of mind for then you will never be riled or ruffled.
Remember: “Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow – that is patience.”
Try these:
- Observe your own reaction when caught in the tail end of a line that does not seem to be moving or caught in slow moving traffic. How do you analyze the situation? Do you curse the people in front of you or do you simply work up a rage and abuse one and all or do you calmly use it as an opportunity to think and introspect or if in a car increase the volume of the music and make the best of a bad situation?
- Name 3 activities that you think really test your patience frequently. What are the alternatives that will enable you to cope with that activity with least irritation and most profit?
- Ask yourself the following questions .Do you enjoy teaching children? Do you think you can spend a couple of hours at the home for the aged or with mentally challenged people? Can you work with slow learners or Alzheimer’s patients? If you answered yes to all of the above….GOD has BLESSED you with the virtue of PATIENCE…please return the favor and go and volunteer in one of the above activities.
This post is courtesy www.actspot.com
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