Patience is the Fuel for Our Life’s Engine

Patience is the Fuel for Our Life’s Engine

We live in a world of instant gratification. Imagine how many times we have caught ourselves checking our cellphones, or waiting in front of our computer for a mail, or checking every so often the news, or waiting for a reply (business or personal), or just a notification which will make us feel connected to everything that’s known in our life. We have access to so much information in our days, because of the technology, that many times when we want to do or accomplish something that needs plenty of time, effort, hard work, we lose our patience and give up, for the same reason we haven’t been trained to be patient.

So what is patience and why do we need it in our life?

Patience is the ability to wait, or to continue doing something in spite of our current difficulties, or to endure without complaining or becoming annoyed. Whatever we do, whatever we want to achieve, we need patience; from making our breakfast to chasing our dreams, we have to deploy patience, and especially when we want to do something big and serve a purpose, a mission greater than ourselves. Of course, we’ll have to encounter setbacks and obstacles in our way and a million more reasons to quit; but we need only one reason to continue to try, and that’s patience. Our ability to see the big picture, not looking for the short-term and keep trying despite the hard times, because we know that what we do is the right thing for us.

 We can’t build patience overnight though. It’s a skill we acquire through repetition and experience. Starting from the small, trivial and day-to-day things, we might need to be patient for a few minutes such as cooking and doing the laundry, or things that require a lot more patience, such as developing a new habit and making a family. Another way to build patience is by changing the way we see the world, by changing our perspective. We have to be mature enough to understand how big is the goal we want and it might take a certain amount of time, effort, persistence and work to achieve it. When we change our perspective concerning patience, we rewire our brain differently and we no longer need that dose of dopamine to make us feel contentment. Instead, we can remain focused on our goals and we can walk the long road of the process patiently.

In addition to this, removing every possible temptation that can distract us and make us not pay attention to our work is also a way to develop patience. Let’s say, for example, we want to write a report for the company we work for and we have our phone next to us, even if it’s not buzzing, even if it’s switched off, our attention will not be 100 per cent in our report. Unconsciously, a part of our attention will also be on the phone. Now imagine, in more difficult tasks such as changing a habit, if we don’t remove the temptations, we are never going to make it.

So, to achieve anything, without giving up in the process, or getting bored or jumping to any conclusions, we have to be patient and try to maintain that patience, because if you work hard and believe in yourself and what you do, then impossible is nothing but an illusion.