On a scale from 1-10…how calm do you generally feel?
Less than 8? Keep reading.
Someone else in your life at less than 8? Keep reading too!
You and everyone in your environment are pretty chilled? Send me a message…I’d love to hear how you got there!
According to Wikipedia ‘patience’ is a state of being.
“It is the ability to endure difficult circumstances. Patience may involve perseverance in the face of delay; tolerance of provocation without responding in disrespect/anger; or forbearance when under strain, especially when faced with longer-term difficulties. Patience is the level of endurance one can have before disrespect. It is also used to refer to the character trait of being steadfast.”
Do you know when to be patient and persistent, and when to give in to your impatience and maybe change your goals?
Patience and persistence are skills that need to be applied with a high level of context-awareness. They are very useful in specific situations and then pay-off in multiples.
These are typical signs of being impatient
Getting regularly overwhelmed and stressed – which might lead to burn-out
Finding it difficult to build trusting relationships – in all areas of life
Jumping to quick-fixes – instead looking for sustainable solutions
What you can do to navigate impatience
1: Managing Overwhelm
When your outside world puts you under constant pressure, it is an uncomfortable situation. You react with impatience and you just want to get away.
Eventually our bodies go into fight/flight response, stress levels rise, and with that high-level cognitive functioning becomes impaired. In other words: you can’t think clearly.
Awareness is the key here – and it is the hardest part.
The moment you notice the above, you need to slow down.
Maybe break the pattern by getting away from your desk for a few minutes – ideally into nature and sunlight. That gives you time and space to reflect and assess the situation calmly and with clear thoughts.
2: Building Trust
As Dr. Steven Corvey put it “you can’t be efficient with people, you need to be effective.”
We often put our stakeholder under pressure and try to be efficient by rushing tasks and decisions.
But all events at work (same as in nature) have an ideal timing. This is the moment when all necessary pieces fall into place. By becoming aware of how to balance urgency and importance with patience and persistence, your chances of ideal alignment and collaboration increase.
Patiently waiting for the right moment is often a communication enhancer. I.E., checking in with your stakeholder and asking if now is the right time to talk, is a fantastic conversation starter, and often determines success or failure.
People have to be in the right space to work with you and to build trust.
3: Avoiding unnecessary quick-fixes
Having the patience and openness to wait, and not to act immediately, requires a higher level of awareness and maturity as a leader.
It is the recognition that inaction can have a higher value than action.
That having ‘enough’ might be more satisfying than striving for ‘more’.
An assessment from a place of wisdom leads to better decisions on how to act. And thereby avoid the quick fixes and lean towards more sustainable solutions.
In summary:
You see that in all three cases I’m referring to awareness as being the key to successfully navigate the pitfalls of being too impatient and not consistent enough.
Awareness only works when you slow down and take the time to notice so that you can clearly see when patience and persistence will get you more sustainable results and when not. Improving your skill of noticing more will enable you to lead with more awareness and more effectively. This is a constant learning process, and we all need to be reminded to look after ourselves first, so that we can create more sustainable solutions for other people and all environments.
Curious to learn more? Reply to this email to set up a conversation about, ‘How to Achieve More with Less Stress’.
Naturally yours,
Ingrid