utopia

I have limited patience in where everything is instant in the world but in relationships, in using the internet i can become gripped in my gut and consumed by wrath at the SLOWness of life sometimes, i feel like im already living for the next years ahead, always wanting everyone around me to pick up the frickin pace already, walk faster, understand it quicker, love faster, open sooner, arrive yesterday for tomorrow. this feels like its leading to self destruction sometimes its so much angst inside that i cant be bothered waiting for anything.

any ideas or exercises people have for improving that virtue of patience?

SaTiT

You can always pray for it...but i wouldn't recommend it.
it hasn't worn out for me yet.lol

mmm... when was the last time you went camping ?
without the radio, cell phone, laptops .lol

Have you ever just took a boat out into a middle of a lake
and just sit there all day and not catch a single fish?

Just laid out on the beach all day and do nothing ?
just laid on a clift and watch and listen to the rythem of the waves crashing ?
Do you hear animals or birds signing everyday ?

Take a simple walk in the sunset ?
or just take a walk to the store or wherever you're going ?

Maybe plant a garden ?

Bascially go into nature...
Time is a mankind invention...seperate reality from society

Maybe learn to play an instrument or start a new hobbie,
something that you're totally not good at. Maybe someting that requires
a lot of details...such as drawing a picture.
This way you'll force to be patient with yourself..so you might
have patients with others.

Or just meditate..at first you'll notice how fast your mind is moving.

Peter

I know what you mean. patience has never been one of my more redeeming qualities.

Even now there is a plumber in my yard doing some major plumbing work and I am in a high state of irritability at the seemingly slowness of his progress.

I do not know of any exercises to counteract patience and I am afraid that if I PRAY for patience my HP might just place me in more situations where I will have to exercise further patience.

What I try to do is remind myself that no amount of harrasment from me is going to make the plumber work faster or better and is only going to result in me getting even more frustrated.

I try to remember things like traffic and weather.

I can completely infuriate myself over those two things which I have absolutely no control and I have to CONCIOUSLY make an effort to stop myself, relax, breathe, and reflect on the countless things I have to be grateful for.

Life will be over for all of us very soon, there is no need for us to hurry things along.

I cannot change other people to suit my needs. The man in front of me will drive slowly if he wants to and the store attendant will be surly if that is her nature. All I can change is the way I respond to them.

lanie67

Wrath. Wow. That is what I am feeling today. I am just so angry, angry, angry. It's healthy, I need to be angry at this point. But I don't need to let it propel me into doing something completely stupid. I need to feel it and experience it and let it go; I'm just restless irritable and discontent because I am very unhappy inside with how my life is going and having so many obstacles and not being able to support myself and having so many ---- problems dealing with people because of my disability that I make a disaster out of every job and every social situation that I get into. I'm just kind of sick of everything right now and ready to explode, and I don't need to do that. I need to have a little faith, but needless to say I am very low on faith right now.

GingerM

Our culture definitely puts us in a "hurry up or get out of the way!" kind of mental space. I, personally, don't think it's a healthy space, primarily because we lose the time to process information. I tried counting the number of pictures shown in a 5 second period during "Sports Center" on ESPN once, and it was something like 12 different photos. It was less than half a second each. I found it agitating because I couldn't process it all.

Then there's what I call "Earth time". This is the pace at which the earth moves. While I don't believe in a higher power in the way that most people do, I have no compunction in admitting that the earth is more powerful than I am, so perhaps it's similar.

When I'm feeling that agitated pushpushpushpush, I like to go outside and look up. We rarely look up in our world anymore, we're in too much of a hurry. I watch the sky, especially at dusk. I was amazed at the size of the dragonflies we have here, and how high up they fly (they must be a good 20 feet up). During the non-rainy days, I like to lay for half an hour or more in my yard and watch the skies - the swallows, the dragonflies, the little bugs that swarm nearly invisibly, and as daylight fades, the bats. I like to listen too - the sound of swallow wings, or the silence of a hawk's flight, the sound of the trees rustling. What I'm doing is trying to find "Earth time", which makes way for no artificial countenance. The Earth doesn't care whether some tv show is about to be on, or if the light just turned green and the person in front of you isn't moving, or if you have a deadline tomorrow.

I even have a running joke about it. Some days I'll get up and tell my husband that I really really don't want to go to work. He'll say "what would happen if you didn't", which is my cue to reply "the earth would cease to revolve about its axis, nuclear winter would set in and we'd all starve". It helps me to put the stresses of life into that kind of perspective - the earth will continue to rotate at the rate it does, it will rain, it will be sunny, swallows will eat bugs, bugs will eat other bugs, grass blades will grow (as my front lawn can demonstrate right now!). Trees which have been around longer than I have will continue to drop their leaves and grow new ones.

The thing I find helpful about reconnecting to "earth time" is that it can be done anywhere that you can find even the smallest bit of nature - even in the biggest city. I've watched ants, hermit crabs, last spring I spent half an hour watching two snails mate (*shrug* I'd never seen it before. It was really slow.) And in watching nature, suddenly a lot of the other unnatural time pressure cease to be real, and when they aren't real, they don't get to me.

I hope this is helpful to you, although it may just make me sound like an utter loony. But that's okay. It works for me.

SaTiT

This is a simple excercise I got from one of my sponsee's anger
management book. I thought i just pratice it.lol
It helped me

anyway,
make a fist...make it as tight as you can, like you're griping something.
You'll start noticing your muscle tightening.
Then open your palm. you'll notice your muscle starts to relax.
I'm teaching my body to release.
This is what usually happens to me, when i get stress.
I bite down on my jaws or grinde my teeth. All the muscle
around my head gets tight and I'll get a headache.

There's also a power post..on SR somewhere.
it's call Cool Breathing Tech.
I followed the instructions on that and it helps, if I do it or practice it.
Bacially you train your brain to think it's breathing in cool air to cool off your brain.
It helps releave stress so the brain thinks cleaer. it sounds conry
at first, but it works.
If you do a little reserch on how your eyes see.
You'll know that there's blinde spots at the conner of our eyes from
all the nerve vessle. Basically our brain generate images to fill in those
blinde spots. So basically our brain make up sheit for us to see or compensate.
So the cool breathing tech is not really that off the wall.

And if you really think about it for a moment..Our brain make up
a lot of images in our heads. At some piont we became comfortable
or go into auto mode, which is okay...but at some piont we
need to regain control of our mind. I'm not saying life is without
anger...but when it becomes just another bad habit then that's not too
healthy becuase our brain generate natural indorphines when we get angery.
it's like a rush....you know...that plumer is not going to get it done
any faster...but it felt good to go out there and rush him a little.lol

okay..we're not monks and can't afford to spend all our days with
a tooth brush scrubbing the floor...becuase that's all they're
doing is focusing on the floor, practicing not to let the mind control
them. Becuase when you're in the moment and not in your head,
there's noting to worry about. It's a form of meditation.

I play my guitar, becuase it dose the samething.
I just go to a park bench sometimes and just sit until my mind stops.

What i found out in my experimenting with meditation is... Not to
control my mind and just let all the images go by like I'm watching
a parade. After a couple weeks of just sitting still for 5 mins a day.
Eventaully my mind ran out of crap or the thoughts slow down
where I'm able to say "stop"...then i'll start being in the moment.
I'll start hearing birds, the wind, feel the air, smell the air, children
laughing. I'm bascially in a state of blitz.
Ignorant is blitz...has a new meaning. I'm ignoring my mind.
It's a paradox, becuase now I'm in control of my mind because I'm not
in it. This way during my days...I can direct my mind or tell it to stop
before I react if things don't always go my way. My thoughts are actaully
clearer and I'm more focus, if i need to do certain task.

I notice this is how my mind works...
thoughts > emotions > action or reaction.

Mlynn

Patience is a HUGE issue for me too. I think the thing is that our childhoods were so unreliable. We couldn't depend on anyone's promises - we knew if we didn't get what we needed RIGHT AT THAT MOMENT that it would NEVER come. Those promises would be broken. Those needs - no matter how despratley they needed to be filled - would be left neglected. We would be left abandoned to want until we learned how not to want anymore - to avoid the pain of disapointment and unfulfilled promises. So we learned that we must grab at anything we want - and secure it immeditially. We could never have what wasn't immediatley secured. Tomarrow came and went - or never came at all - and the promise or the need was forgotten - we were forgotten.

I think thats why patience is a huge issue for so many of us. We live what we learned. Every experience we have ever had has tought us that "patience" is not rewarded - and that patience is harmful to our ability to survive. That if we don't get what we need immeditially that we will NEVER get it. "Patience" ment neglect or to some of us even the thret of death. Patience doesn't exist when you are a child...so when you are an adult child - an ACOA - it has to be learned - which is extremly difficult and scarey - as we don't have a single possitive experience with patience or it's ability to bring good instead of harm and pain.

carl250r

Patience is good to have and i am sure you have more of it than you give your self credit for.

and honestly allot of things and people could stand to pick up the pace a little.

hell i hury up to slow down,