Or you’re selling a product, and you get a service call?
Or, as a parent, you lie on the couch while your child naps, only to have the phone ring?
Interruptions can exhaust our patience.
What is patience? I once heard it described as long-suffering. Good description. If we endure some situations, it feels like we suffer for a long time. Want to become a more patient person? Here are three ways to do so:
1. Seeing things from my perspective is a given; I need to view events through the perspective of others. My default mode is to observe life through the prism of my goals, wants, needs, and agenda… Sometimes, when I am in this mindset and people talk with me, I wish they would stop. All I see is my agenda. This is selfishness, and the root of impatience is selfishness.
2. Treat everyone you come in contact with as if they are the most important person on earth. That was not my idea; it was Earl Nightingale’s, and it is valid. People naturally look at themselves as the most important on earth. Treat them in that way, and it will change your viewpoint on patience.
3. Allow circumstances to strengthen your patience muscles. Incredibly, when someone intentionally practices patience, he will often find himself in situations that scream for impatience. Trust me, I know.
I read that a preacher wrote that cultivating virtues is like weightlifting. And I agree. Athletes often generate muscles through weightlifting, which is nothing less than facing resistance. Force is pitted against mass, and the mass doesn’t move unless the force moves it. An athlete will move many pounds of mass through pain and suffering and grow muscle. So it is with virtues like patience. To grow patience, an individual must develop his virtue muscles through resistance. This is often best achieved through encountering people whose very actions and behaviors scream for a reaction of impatience. To not give in is to build great muscles of patience and to grow stronger in practicing the virtue.
An old proverb goes like this: “Better a patient person than a warrior, one with self-control than one who takes a city” (Prov. 16:32.) A person who has cultivated the virtue of patience can do great things.
Have patience.