During my holiday vacation, I had a lot of time off to think and reflect. One topic that popped up early on in my mind is the idea of practicing patience. You see… I am not a patience person… at all. It’s an inside joke between me and Sean, but it’s starting to get out of hand. Truly, this is a bad habit of mine that I want to work on and improve this year. So I started researching techniques that have helped others practice patience daily. After about a month of trying them out, here are 3 tips that have worked for me (I’m still working on it, though!).
3 Techniques That Help Me Practice Patience Daily
Be a better listener
I have always struggled with keeping up with the speed of my brain. Sometimes it feels like it’s working a million times faster than everyone else’s, which can be really overwhelming, but also rude. I struggle to let people finish speaking. So badly, I want to jump in and say YES I KNOW…but I have come to the realization that this is not serving me. Not only is it rude, but it’s unprofessional.
I started my daily practice of patience by focusing on what people are actually saying instead of thinking ten steps ahead in our conversation. I’ve found that this has allowed for more of a flow to my conversations — after all, you never know where a chat will go! One tool that has really helped me is to write down what I want to say. That way, when it’s my turn to talk, I am prepared. I can always start off by saying, “To your point…” or something similar to that so that I can easily loop in what I wanted to say.
Practice my gratitude
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: gratitude journaling has been a total and complete game changer for me. It really forces me to stop and think each morning and each evening. The Five Minute Journal is what I use and I love it. It’s so easy and doesn’t require much time at all — but makes a big difference in my ability to be more patience when I’m stressed.
Embrace the slowdown
After about 30 minutes at my first pottery class (more on that here), I realized that I needed to sloooooow down. In my day-to-day routine of getting as much work done as I can, as quickly as I can, I have developed a habit of speeding through things. With pottery, you can’t do that.
What has helped you to be a more patient person? I would love to know ways that you practice patience daily! I’m always looking to add to my arsenal of self-improvement tools.
