A Piece Of My Heart

Patience

On a scale of 1-10, how patient are you? Do you have a preference for instant gratification? Is impatience or patience a family characteristic? What qualities would you like to develop to help you be more patient with yourself and others?

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As I was pondering how to tackle this prompt, I found there are certain aspects of my life where I am consistently patient, and other aspects where I am overwhelmingly not. I will rate each separately with 0 being the least patient, and 10 being the most patient.

Patience with the Process
When it comes to waiting for something completely out of my control, I will happily wait forever for it. A perfect example is purchasing something online. I know it is coming, and there is nothing I can do to speed up the mail, so I’ll wait and wait and wait for it, sometimes so long that I forget I’m waiting for something at all (the surprise of finding a gift to myself in the mail is always fun ). I’ve done my part, and whatever happens next is not my fault or my responsibility. If I never receive the package (it was lost), they’ll eventually send me an email asking me how I like my new item, and I’ll be reminded then that I never received it. I don’t know if this is a good or a bad trait, but it’s just the way I am. If worrying about it will do no good, why waste my time and brain power doing so? Rating: 10/10

Patience with Promises
One way I am not patient is when it comes to people and the promises they make. If someone tells me they’ll reply to my email before noon, I’ll get incredibly frustrated and annoyed if the email doesn’t come until afternoon. Or if someone promises they will be home by a certain time and are not, I don’t like waiting for them. This is probably a result of my own obsession with punctuality. I would never ever promise something I could not do, even something as mundane as sending an email at a certain time. I am particularly conscious of other people’s time, so I expect others to be the same way, but I find this is often not the case. Rating: 2/10

Patience with Driving
Don’t even go there. The road rage is real. I hesitate to say I hate anything, but I will say I get the most annoyed while driving. That’s a whole other entry… Rating: 0/10

Patience with Myself
This aspect of patience was interesting to think about. Many things I do happen slowly, but that’s more a result of procrastination than patience. Maybe a better example would be when I make a mistake, how patient am I with myself in correcting it? I think I am a harsh self-critic, so I find it hard to forgive myself when things go wrong as a result of my mistake. I should work to be more patient and give myself more room to learn and grow from mistakes rather than beating myself down over them. Rating: 4/10