Impatience is a refusal to be where you are.
It's the desire to shorten the gap between now and what's next. A phone call you've been waiting for. Paint that needs to dry before you can add the second layer. Dinner that won't cook fast enough when you're hungry. The last few minutes of traffic between you and home. A change in income you're anticipating or a job offer.
What we're really trying to do, in all of it, is skip the present.
And I think that's why impatience feels so excruciating. It's not because the waiting itself is hard, but because we're in resistance with what is. That resistance is emotional and it's physical. You can feel it in your chest, your jaw, even in your hands. Our bodies have an incredible way of showing us what we are not yet ready to see or process like crossing our arms, unconsciously making a fist, or holding our breath and not fully exhaling before we remember that we are not being chased nor are we in a fight.
The more impatient I am, the more I'm reinforcing a story about myself, my life, and my way of being. It's a belief about never enough. Not content, not truly appreciative, not okay with the moment as it is.
This doesn't mean we are ungrateful though it's easy to fall into this self- blame game. What it means is that we are trying to control something that doesn't belong to us. Instead of choosing to accept, like, and eventually love ourselves unconditionally, we are choosing to believe a story that we aren't good enough, that we can never truly be happy, and maybe even believe that good things don't happen to us.
Suffering comes from thinking we have control over something and therefore fighting against it instead of letting go and trusting that we can experience a better, more peaceful and loving life once we release the weight.
Some days that's an easy thing to do. Other days it's incredibly difficult, to find gratitude in the waiting, to trust that life continues after this moment passes, even when our body doesn't feel what the mind already knows.
Here are five small, ordinary ways I practice patience everyday, without really trying because what we practice in one area of our life, we practice and expand in all areas:
- Making my coffee or tea in the mornings. I make espresso the original way, on the stove, or tea, which means waiting for water to boil and the tea to infuse instead of a button doing it for me. I've created a situation in which there's purposely no shortcut. I don't keep checking, I don't go on my phone or think about what I'll do next. I either look out the window or stretch and breathe for about 10 minutes while I wait.
- Taking my dog out for a walk. Some days she wants to be out longer than I planned for, and she'll choose to just plop down and lay there until she's ready to move again. The more I fight it, the harder she digs in. The interesting thing is I've noticed my mind always exaggerates how long I think we'll actually be out. What she usually wants when she plants herself is three to five uninterrupted minutes. That's all.
- In the studio. Mixing my paint colours ahead of time makes everything easier, and still, my need to jump straight into creating often wins, which means I end up mixing paint several times throughout a piece and interrupting the whole flow of it. It shows up again waiting for layers to dry, accepting that something isn't working and needs to be painted over and tried again, or realizing that the only way to get a feather looking the way I see it in my head is to take the time and paint each one.
- Washing my brushes properly. Rinsing off the paint, getting them as clean as I can, every time. It's tempting to leave them out overnight and deal with it later, but that was a habit I had to break because I was replacing brushes far more often than I ever needed to.
- Writing ideas down before I go chase them. I have a creative cheerleader on steroids in my brain, and sometimes when an idea hits, she gets veryyy excited very quickly and wants to plant it all out and execute immediately. The thing is, I don't always have all the pieces yet, or all the information. So I practice patience by writing it down, painting it out, speaking it with someone, or capturing it however I can, and trusting that it isn't always ready for fruition yet. Every idea starts from a different seed, and every seed needs its own amount of time to bloom.
What do you keep coming up against that you're impatient about? It might be the very key to the freedom and peace you're truly after.
With love,
Katherine
