Patience is the ability to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset. As best-selling author, Joy Meyer, writes in her book Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind, “Patience is not the ability to wait but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting. “
That’s easy to say, but difficult to remember, isn’t it? We experience little moments every day that try our patience—bad traffic, long grocery store lines, doctor’s office waiting rooms.
But don’t overlook the larger, longer-term struggles we all have with impatience like the failure to move up the corporate ladder as quickly as you’d hoped, the agonizing wait and hope for a positive pregnancy test, or the struggle to sell a house or afford to go back to school.
This week I want you to think and write about patience. How patient of a person are you? What most tries your patience?
Business and behavior science writer Steve Maraboli writes, “What good has impatience ever brought? It has only served as the mother of mistakes and the father of irritation.”
How do you respond to situations that test your patience? How has impatience hurt you, and how do you overcome it? Has impatience ever been beneficial to you? Is there someone in your life you admire for their patience?
Take a little time this week to write down your thoughts about patience or a story you could share relating to patience, then comment below.
I always suggest you type in a word-processing document first, then cut and paste it into the comment box below. I would hate for you to lose your writing should something go wrong when submitting the comment. Losing my written work certainly tries my patience.
1 Comment
Judi
My first thought was to write Patience: none and push send. I may still go with that. I am definitely not a patient person, except with little children. I have no patience with someone who is trying to tell me something and goes over and over the same information. Get to the point. I have patience in the doctor’s waiting room because I bring my Nook. Traffic doesn’t bother me because I’m old and retired and I’ll get there when I get there. I’m trying to have more patience with the world, because God has so much patience with me!