Mindfulness attitude of patience: what is patience and how can it help you?

The nine attitudes of mindfulness include the valuable wisdom of patience. In my 8 week online mindfulness course, we delve into the nine mindful attitudes to discover what benefits they hold for us. In this post, I want to elaborate on the mindfulness attitude of patience and what that means for our practice and importantly for how we manage ourselves.

Let me tell you a personal story. As a child, I remember picking a rose bud and with natural child-like curiosity, I peeled apart the petals to unfold the flower inside, which I wondered I might hurry along if I could just open the bud. Inside, you’ve guessed it, it was something of a disappointment to discover that you can’t rush a rose. The lesson here is that although we might want something to exist in a certain way right now, often this is out of our control. With the flower, there certainly would have been ways to influence its timely bloom, keeping the border well fertilised and watered, keeping the plant free of pests, but ultimately nature would have its way and the flower would only ever come in its own time. The process of its (also special) gradual unfolding and full beauty only ever revealed at just the right moment.

As so often with the attitudes of mindfulness, it can almost be easier to understand the wisdom by imagining the opposite quality. So, for a moment, think of impatience. What impact does an attitude of impatience have in your life? For a moment, pause and reflect on this… Perhaps you can bring to mind an incident where impatience ruled… in a minor or even major way… Perhaps impatience towards someone else, yourself or a situation? How did this feel at the time? What were the consequences of this impatience on yourself or others? How did it impact on the situation? I’m willing to bet it wasn’t all hunky-dory.

Take now the attitude of patience…. I realise it’s possible you may already have the proverbial ‘patience of a saint’ and if so, congratulations! But not everyone is so constant with patience. It’s a distinctly human trait to want to hurry along good things, and hurry to get away from bad things. In fact, it seems our modern world is designed to encourage this pacey way of living, seeking the next best thing without taking time to be in the present. If we are always impatient for the next step, then we’re in a state of drive, seeking and striving into the future, rarely at ease with what is here now. And to be patient is to be with each ‘right now’ in our life, good, bad or neutral. Being impatient makes us blind to many moments of our lives, maybe missing out on moment we could otherwise savour. Of course, it’s natural to want to hurry through negative experiences, but even within those negative experiences, impatience often makes the experience harder.

There are many themes to impatience at different times of our lives. Often we might be trying to hurry to get to the next life milestone; we may even miss out on the joys of a frosty morning, because we can’t wait till spring. We might want to hurry away difficult feelings, such as a panic attack, when patience and a calm acceptance of the emotion is the best way to manage such a wave of anxiety.

Patience means taking on board the wisdom that some that sometimes it is necessary to allow and accept the fact that some things will unfold in their own time. In this respect, patience is closely linked to the other mindfulness attitudes of acceptance and letting go.

Patience is not to be confused with inaction however. Sometimes a nudge of impatience is useful for taking action where situations are in our control and helpful action can be taken to improve the quality of our life or of others. But on occasions where we are already doing what we can, then patience is an attitude which will help our wellbeing.

Patience in our practice

Patience can be developed in our mindfulness practice. When we start out we may easily be tempted to give up because we don’t seem to be improving, or we’re not seeing any benefits yet. Hurry up, where are all the good things we expected to arise from our practice? Impatience is an obstacle here. Developing mindfulness takes time and regular practice. It’s a skill that you are building… Much like getting fit: if you wished to run a marathon and you only just manage to run to the bus stop, you realise you need to be patient with your progress. It takes time to build any skill. So you can choose patience, allowing the recognition that it takes time to learn to manage our wandering minds, and time for the benefits to become clear.

Patient is a form of action

Far from being passive, patience is a choice. It is an intention to let go of forcing things and waiting for an outcome, when this is the choice which would be most helpful. Around 400BC Lao Tsu wrote in the Tao Te Ching, “Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?” This is the art of patience.

When we are stressed and our mind is full, the mind can be like murky water and in an attempt to rush things to be a certain way, all kind of thoughts make up the mud, clouding judgment, limiting choices. Actions might be taken which may not always be for the best for ourselves, our relationships or our emotional wellbeing. In these situations, consider the attitude of patience as a forgiving option.

There are many people who find not knowing an outcome extremely hard to deal with - this is known as intolerance of uncertainty. It can create a lot of anxiety and stress, while the anxious mind goes hard to work catastrophising and trying to predict and hit upon a guaranteed outcome. Of course there are no absolute certainties in life. The anxious mind lacks patience, it wants to know as soon as possible what and when things will happen as if knowing this will help you to prepare for all eventualities. Acknowledging this tendency of the mind to seek answers and then being patient with it can be soothing, perhaps helping you to find greater peace when troubled.

How else might patience help you in your life? Take a moment to ponder on patience and when you could use it.

If you’re interested in finding out more about my 8 week mindfulness courses, please get in touch via the contact page to register your interest.