Practicing patience is....annoying(!)

ruminations on waiting 😡

A friend reached out recently to see how we are settling in to our new life in the West. I told him that things were taking longer than we’d planned and that, it’d been a rocky start.

His message back was simple and poignant, Give it time, Jaz.

It feels ironic that I received this reminder after just writing a piece about our culture of urgency last month. But why can’t I learn to be more patient, more quickly?! 😰

I’ve always thought myself a patient person, but in the last few years I’ve been questioning if I am truly patient, or if I am only patient in certain situations, orrrrr if I’m not patient whatsoever.

Wait…what is patience exactly?

The Oxford English dictionary defines it as:

1. the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.

The capacity to tolerate, and not just tolerate, but tolerate AND not get upset while you wait. UGH. But I don’t want to do that. I’d rather things to be pleasant, comfortable, and exactly as I want them. Wouldn’t you?

But of course, that’s not how life works, and I don’t think that’s actually what I want. I do want to work my resilience muscles. To not have things handed to me. In theory. But actually living through delay, uncomfortability, reality that doesn’t match expectation — is quite hard.

So what do we do (or more accurately, what can I do?) when confronted with moments, days, seasons, that demand patience, that is, if we/I want to stay sane along the way?

Here are some ideas:

—> Distraction: doing something that helps me/us avoid the uncomfortable feelings all together until enough time has passed and something has changed. Watch a tv show. Call a friend (this might also count for ‘perspective’—see later in the list). Eat something delicious. Is this the most integrated/ “healthy” way to deal? Probably not, but as my mom says, sometimes you just need to have a drink and let it pass (currently I’m having to resort to N/A Coronas and that has been doing the trick!).

—> Physical movement: getting out of the head and into the body to maybe avoid, sure, but also to confront, feel, and work through the feelzzzz. Or just to get the dopamine rush. I think it also helps me feel less stuck in circumstance if I can at least move my body. Yoga. A walk. A shake. A little dance. Did you see that study circulating the internet which found that dancing was the single most effective way to prevent depression?

—> Meditation: being with the feelings, breathing through them, quieting the mind. This hopefully brings some peace in the moments that you remember there is a lot more beyond this particular moment (again, perspective). However, meditation isn’t always the prescription. It can be truly infuriating to try and sit still and quiet the mind in moments of frustration or anxiety. Sometimes it’s better to match the energy we are experiencing. Think shaking, running, or jumping jacks. Where are my somatic experts at? 👀

—> Journaling: or writing in general. What I am doing now. Yes, to understand what is going on and a way through, but also because it feels good. So perhaps this option is doing anything that you enjoy. Those things that bring us to the present help us move away from anxiety about the future.

—> Taking a different route: now, this goes back to my solution-oriented brain, but sometimes if you are presented with a wall along your path, waiting for something to come along and demolish the wall might have you waiting for a long-ass time. A different route could be in order. 👷🏼

—> Resetting expectations: I think this is what my friend did for me when he said, “Things take time.” He reminded me that it’s okay to wait, and actually that it’s pretty unrealistic of me to think that everything would happen immediately. Again, the culture of urgency and immediate gratification we are steeped in doesn’t help. Time can do a lot of work if we let it.

—> Perspective: so sometimes the most annoying thing someone can say to you when you are struggling in your own shit is, “it could be a lot worse,” but actually, it could. As I watched the news in the south following Hurricane Helene and got yet another news alert about Gaza getting bombed, I am reminded that I don’t actually think about my physical safety on a daily basis. Yes, I am living through a time in my life that is uncertain and yes transitions can be difficult, but my day to day is really quite beautiful and safe. I just bought fresh sourdough from our neighbor up the street. I picked olives that I am going to learn how to cure with my mom and my partner. My baby is growing and healthy and moving around everyday reminding me of how fortunate I am, even in moments of *uncomfortable* waiting.

Sourdough I purchased from a neighbor, fresh olives picked from a tree in our yard (along with homegrown lavender & gifted chamomile), and my growing belly--all reminders that many good things take time.

—> Accepting what’s out of my control: this is a big one. Years ago when I was interviewing at The Ready, one of my 3 interviews was dedicated to a practice of understanding my Locus of Control. There’s a lot on the internet about this topic. I tried to find their exact diagram and I can’t seem to locate it, so I adapted a diagram by Sue and Neil Thompson that appeared in their 2008 book, The Critically Reflective Practitioner.

The key takeaway here is, there are things we can control, things within our sphere of influence (which we also can grow or shrink), and then those things that which are completely out of our control—that’s where adaptation, acceptance, and our reaction (which we CAN control 😅) comes into play.

In this moment, I am realizing that there were things about this transition to the west coast that I thought were in my control, but really they were in my zone of influence or completely out of my hands all together. Reflecting on that now helps me see that I could have thought about this sooner, while still in NY, so I was more accurately tuned into what I was betting on and if I could control it or not. Essentially, I could have more accurately assessed risk and set more realistic expectations about how long settling from a move this big would take. But alas, the past would fall into one of those things we cannot control, so we’ll add that to the list of things to let go of. 😅

So here we are in the present moment. What can I control?

This diagram I pulled off Reddit.

It’s useful to look at this chart because it challenges me to take accountability for what’s mine. I don’t know about you, but the things in that blue bubble can be tricky! It can be a lot easier to blame the outside world and circumstance. In fact, in the theory of Locus of Control, folks who tend to blame everything on external forces, who have a mentality of “things happen to me,” have an external locus of control, whereas those who generally feel in control of what happens in their lives - “I can make things happen,” have an internal locus of control.

When things are going well, it tends to be a lot easier to think, “I made that happen,” whereas in moments of spiral, I know I can certainly feel like “so many bad things are happening to me.” Keeping the CIA (control/influence/adapt) model in mind, helps me ground, or at least it’s helping me ground into this current moment where I have more questions than answers about what’s going to happen next.

The truth of it all, is that some days are harder than others to tolerate, especially when you are living in limbo. But as a UPS driver sang to me one afternoon in a Brooklyn lobby as he delivered my package and saw my long face, 🎶 “Mama said there’d be days like this, ‘there’d be days like this,’ my mama said.” 🎵

Which brings me to my last thought around cultivating patience, it really helps to talk to others, to have solidarity, to say to another human, DAMN I wish things were moving more quickly and to hear them say back, I feel you, I hate waiting, too.

So in that practice of sharing with others and seeing ourselves in each other, I am curious if you’d share in the comments:

• Is there something you are waiting for right now? What’s been your experience of “tolerating” the waiting period? How do you cope?

• What is your relationship to patience?

• What practices do you lean on to cultivate more internal ease/peace as you wait?

I’d love to hear more about your perspective and experience.

As always — with love & in practice,

Jasmine

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In my last newsletter, I shared a print I made around the culture of urgency called, “You control the pace.” Many of you inquired about it and I am happy to report that I got my Etsy shop live again. You can see that print (& purchase if you fancy) here along with a few other pieces of original work.