MoHow Posted By Joel Simms Over the years I have been asked many times by many people how I remain calm and patient in situations where others become agitated, frightened, frustrated and angry. My answer has been, “I have learned to be patient by learning a range of skills that anyone can acquire if they have the desire and are prepared to practice.”
If impatience is a problem for you, one you want to address, here are 10 skills that work for me. Practice them and they will help you become calmer, more tolerant, and more patient……
1. Track how often you get worked up. This is the first step. Start by noting how often you react with impatience in a day. Do this tracking for one week and keep the number in a journal. By learning to become more aware of the actual number of times you are impatient each day you will increase your motivation to break this habit.
2. Track the situations, events and people associated with your impatience. As you become more aware of losing your patience, pay close attention to the things that trigger you to lose that patience. Is it when you are stuck in traffic? When you do don’t get the results you want? When your friends don’t call you back? Certain triggers will recur more frequently than others, these are the things you will focus on going forward. Track the situations for one week.
3. Track what you say to yourself when you feel impatient. Each time you notice that you feel impatient ask yourself, “What am I thinking?“, and write down the series of thoughts. Do this for a week.
4. Pause and breathe. When you first start to lose your patience, take a deep breath, and breathe out slowly. Then a second and a third deep breath in and slow breath out. This sequence will help you reduce the tension and impatience.
5. Replace your thoughts. Once you have tracked your thoughts for a week begin to notice if there is a pattern of recurring thoughts. Note what the recurring thoughts are and write some alternate thoughts that are more calming. then go over the new thoughts and begin to replace the old impatience related thoughts with the new calming thoughts in real time situations.
For example if you used you say “I’ll never get to my destination in time because the traffic in the city is always crazy and the roads are always under repair.” Replace that statement with, ” I may be a few minutes late, it’s not the end of the world, I can call ahead. The road work is going to improve this highway.”
6. Distance your self from the situation. Often it’s best, in some situations, to just to walk away for a few minutes. Take a break from the situation, just for 5-10 minutes, let yourself calm down, plan out your words and actions and solution, and then return.
7. Change your focus. Impatience can grow like pressure inside a tank, and if you don’t relieve the pressure, you can burst. So find ways to lessen the pressure by changing your focus and shifting your attention. Listen to music in the car, think about your beautiful children, call and speak to a close friend.
8. Visualize. practice doing this before the frustrating situation comes up again. When you’re alone and in a quiet place, visualize how you want to respond the next time your trigger happens. How you will handle the situation? How you will look? What do will say to yourself? How others will respond? Think about all these things, and visualize the better outcome.
9. Start small. Start with a trigger that only induces mild impatience within you, not something that causes you to blow your top. Focus on this and work on controlling your reaction to this one trigger. When you get this one under control, use what you learned to focus on the next small trigger. One at a time, and with practice, you’ll get there.
10. Keep practicing. Every time a situation stretches your patience, just think of it as an opportunity to practice your patience skills. Because that’s what it take to become patient; practice, repetition, rehearsal, and even more practice. The more you practice, the better you’ll get.
This post provides you with fundamental information. If you want further help and coaching contact me at: joelsimms@maintainmomentum.com.
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Author's Bio:
ACHIEVEMENT MAINTENANCE EXPERT: I have been providing guidance, support, training, and coaching to individuals and groups to help them maintain momentum in important projects, programs and initiatives and achieve their goals for over 20 years. Prior to that I spent 20 years in industry as an executive and consultant.
WRITER: I am the author of Momentum Mind: Achiever’s Mind, an interactive 35 lesson training program that is available on the website, as well as an ebook with the same title that will be available Spring 2013.. In addition I blog regularly at www.maintainmomentum/blog, write articles on the website www.maintainmomentum.com, post often at www.facebook.com/maintainmomentum, tweet at www.twitter.com/DrMoToGo, and contribute articles on achievement, momentum thinking, motivation, inspiration, and goal maintenance on this website.
MOMENTUM COACH: I am known as Dr. Mo by coaching clients, members on the maintainmomentum website, colleagues and thousands of people around the world who read my morning email AmMo, and my blog, posts on facebook, and messages on Twitter. I have dedicated my life to helping individuals, groups, and teams keep the gains of their initiatives, projects and programs going over the long haul. I provide coaching service offline in my office practice and online through the Live! Video feature of www.maintainmomentum.com.