EP 112: How to Be More Patient!

If you've ever found yourself losing it when your kid acted up...

If you've ever promised yourself you'd be more patient next time...

If you ever wish you responded better when things didn't go your way...

This podcast is for YOU!

Years ago, a simple way of looking at patient and bearing through hard times came to my attention and has been a tremendous help to me! And I KNOW it will help you too!

Ready to "Overcome the MOM-GUILT?!" Get your FREE mini-training here: https://www.themissiondrivenmom.com/

Transcript: 

Welcome back to the podcast. I am super excited for you to spend the next few minutes with me. We are going to talk about patience and how you can be more patient, even when you don't want to be and you don't know how.

There's a concept that I learned a few years ago that has been super helpful to me in understanding the connection between obtaining a vision and being a creator in the world and needing to exercise patience and how they're all connected. I'm going to give you some tools for that.

Before we get into that, if this podcast has been a blessing to you in your life, I would love for you to share it along and give us a review that helps others to know, uh, what it is that we're doing here and how it might benefit their lives.

All right, let's dive into patience now. If you have ever had someone tell you that you just need to be more patient, and it made you super mad then join the club, because I have been there many times.

Let's look at patience. Here's a simple definition you can pull from Google. It's waiting without becoming upset or annoyed. It's tolerating, delay, trouble, or suffering without anger or upset. And it's one of those things that we have a certain ability, a certain cap on our patience capacity, I would say, and it's hard to know how to get beyond that. I mean, what is patience? After all?

It's been considered a Christian virtue for a long time. It's something that is talked about in scripture quite a bit. It's something that we feel that maybe we should be. Or others should be, or we would like them to be patient with us, patient with themselves, patient with the process. And yet it's so hard to do. It's so hard to not get upset when things get hard.

So I'm going to tell you a little story here of something that happened in a workshop that will give you kind of a visual for how this tool of patience works.

“When participants enter the meeting room on the third day of the Living Art Conference, they find seven water glasses placed in a diagonal line on a table in front of the room. A pitcher filled with water is next to the line of glasses. The glasses are empty. Just before the class begins. I fill one glass with water. Nothing is said about this action, and most of the class does not seem to pay attention to the event that has taken place. Just before the morning break, I fill another glass with water.

Some of the participants notice, but only one person asked me a question about it during the break. ‘What are the glasses for?' he asks.

‘That's a good question,’ I answer nonchalantly.

‘You're not going to tell me,’ he asks.

‘That's another good question.’ I answer with a smile. He laughs and then goes out to have a cup of coffee.

The morning's work has been very exciting and the events filling the water glasses, the events of filling water glasses are very small by comparison. When the class convenes, I casually fill another glass with water. Nothing is said about it. I do not fill another glass before the lunch break. Most people hurry off to the dining room.

A few remain to talk about the content of the morning. No one mentions the glasses. When the afternoon session begins, I fill another glass with water. Two or three people snicker.

Someone asks, ‘When are you going to drink them?’ I just smile. Most people seem not to be paying much attention to the question or to my lack of an answer.

Then the class is divided into groups to conduct some experiments and nothing more is said about the glasses. An afternoon break is called, I do not fill another glass with water. During the break, someone rushes up to me to ask if she can have a drink from one of the glasses. No, I answer. Oh, she says, with a knowing grin, I wonder what she thinks she knows.

Rosalyn begins the next session just before she begins to lead the class. In an exercise, she fills another glass with water. ‘Hey, she can do it too,’ someone is heard to say in the late afternoon. Rosalyn calls a break. She does not fill a glass with water.

When Rosalyn comes back from the break, she finds that some of the water has been removed from one of the glasses. The water level in the glasses that have been filled was about the same across all the glasses when she left the room, now one glass is missing half its original amount. Roslyn pours water into it, bringing it up to the same level as the others, and begins the next part of her session.

Rosalyn leads the class through some remarkable techniques, and for the last part of the session, people discuss their insights and report their experiences. The energy is high and exciting. Rosalyn fills another glass with water, then calls the dinner break. There are seven water glasses in a diagonal line, six of which are now filled with water.

A few more people ask what is going on with the water glasses? That's a good question. We answer when we come back from the dinner break, we find that someone has left a little flower in one of the filled glasses and another glass has mysteriously lost about a third of its water. I add water to the depleted glass, bringing the water level back to its original level, and remove the flour.

Just before I begin the evening session, I fill the remaining glass with water employing great exaggerated formality. Most people cheer, some laugh. A few seem not to notice. Take out a piece of paper please and write down what you think has been going on with the water glasses. I say I collect all the answers in a small basket and give the basket to the first person in the first row.

‘Take out one of the answers and then pass the basket to the next person.’ I say, ‘Now read the answer written on the paper.’

The person reads. 'There are seven glasses that are filled with water. Over time, I think that Robert will place some music on them because there are seven glasses, just as there are seven nodes in the Diatonic Music scale.’

‘Thank you,’ I say. Then the next person reads the answers he has taken out of the basket. ‘Water symbolizes purity in life, and seven is a universal number. The glasses have been filled over time, which symbolizes the universe has filled with the fluid purity of life.’

‘Thank you. Next please.’

The next one says, ‘Seven glasses are filled with water throughout the day. This is tension. When all of the glasses are filled, that is a resolution.’

Then they go on with other answers that the people have. And I'll tell you more about this in just a minute, but I want to stop right there and talk about this answer that this person had. Tension is another way of thinking about patience.

If you envision yourself holding onto a rubber band and you pull that rubber band with your fingers or between your hands, and you pull it until it's tight and maybe even beyond where it's tight and then you hold it. That's tension. Tension always seeks resolution. So over time, as you hold onto this rubber band, you'll get tired of holding it. Your muscles will physically get tired. And you will want to let go. That rubber band wants you to release the tension on it. Your hands, your mind, even because this is a psychological principle, as much as as it is physical, wants that tension released.

It's important to understand that where there's no tension, there's no need of patience.

There are plenty of things in your life that are going on every day. And you don't have to exercise patience around them. They come and go. They happen. They don't bother you. You aren't tempted to get angry or upset or express negative emotion around something.

But when you are, those negative emotions that either express themselves or want to be expressed are an indication that something is testing your patience, that there is some kind of tension in your life that you want resolution to, and this tension is uncomfortable. It's tiring, it's hard work.

Now tension is absolutely necessary in life. It is the key to all storytelling and storytelling is the most fundamental thing that we do. We tell each other's stories. We create our lives into a story and we communicate best, we remember best, what is put in story form. We are story creating and storytelling beings at our very foundation, and there's not ever a story told that doesn't have tension.

The whole point of a story is to create tension and hold on for the resolution. The end of the story is the resolution, and that's when the tension is released and the thing fills whole. And if you're with someone and they start telling you a story that's really interesting to you, you will remember and return to them to have that tension resolved for yourself because you need to finish hearing that story.

This is in the contrasts in the dark and light, and all of the opposites in the world. This is a fundamental element of art, that there is tension that must be resolved. In fact, there's tension in the physical world, and it's only through tension that we can do things like fly planes. So what's really fascinating about patience is that it is an element of personal growth that is often completely overlooked, but it's absolutely vital to our ability to become more because patience must be practiced when tension is present. And tension is only present when there's an expectation. When you are tempted to express negative emotions, it is a lot of the time, not always, but a lot of the time it is because your patience is being tested and the reason your patience is being tested is because you have a vision, a goal, or an expectation of yourself or someone else that isn't being met, and it creates tension and discomfort. You want the resolution of seeing that expectation or that goal or that vision resolved. And what's fascinating about this tension is that tension is the only way that growth is possible. Just as you must pull on a rubber band or push on something, if you'll think about any type of exercise for the physical body, it's a pushing or pulling type of exercise. Tension is created. Resistance is part of the process of breaking down the muscle so that more can be grown, and that is why if we want to reach better goals, if we want to engage in personal growth, if we want to become more than we are, patience is an absolutely indispensable part of that process, and it is tolerating the tension until the resolution comes.

And that means we are not exercising patience if we are emotionally upset that isn't patience. Patience is when we hold the tension without the negative emotion. Now, ideally the tension is what keeps things interesting when we understand exercising patience as a way of holding tension. Then we can start to see that it's the tension that's making the muscles grow. It's the tension that's making us more than who we were, and it's the tension that's keeping things interesting, and that's causing us to keep working. If we were completely comfortable and we had everything that we had ever dreamed of or desired, we would stop working. We would stop growing. We would stop practicing patience.

Holding tension is actually one of the most vital things that we can do to grow as individuals. This is the same concept as the law of the harvest.

Things only grow when there's delay. When you plant the seed, you must wait. You cannot change the law. You must hold the tension, but you can aid that seed in growing. By doing the work, and we'll talk about this more in a minute, the seed is most likely to be harvested, to become what you want to become when you're vigilant throughout the process. And that is how you hold the tension properly is you're anxiously engaged while you hold the tension. You don't just hold the tension and sit there. You hold the tension by doing the work that's necessary to the outcome that you're trying to create. And this is why it's so vital when you're practicing patience to work within your own center of influence. And we'll talk about that more in just a minute. Okay.

Here's a couple quotes about this that are really, really helpful.

“One of the most important life lessons, one that is essential to your life as a creator, is mastery of tension resolution systems.”

So what he's saying here is that you cannot grow as a person unless you learn. To hold tension, to practice patience by holding tension with optimism and excitement, and being forward-looking, looking forward to the result that you're striving to create.

“As you master tension resolution systems, you master the ability to engage in your own personal growth.”

You cannot become more tomorrow unless you choose to create systems in where you're forced, systems where you're forced to grow. Now, these can be systems other people have created.

We do this all the time when we sign up for classes. We choose to be intention. We choose to practice patience, to engage in actions that will cause our growth. And to delay our satisfaction, the resolution of that grade that we don't get until the final test. We force ourselves to work and work and work, and we engage in our own personal growth.

Here's another one.

“If you have not become intimate with delayed resolutions, you will not be able to achieve long range goals.”

This is what maturity is really about. The most mature people in the world can delay their gratification. They can practice patience for the longest periods of time. They literally have the most patience because they can hold the greatest amount of tension for the longest period of time. It's really a fascinating way to look at the growth that you want to engage in.

Now let's return to our glasses story. They did a debrief after the fact, and he actually had several of the students in his workshop. He asked them questions and broke down their response to the tension resolution system that he created. He created a situation for them that they did not understand, that they did not know how to resolve, or they had no option but to practice their patience and to wait and watch and see what would happen.

This is one example of how he breaks these down.

“The events of filling the glasses with water had no special meaning other than the construction of a simple tension resolution system. The order in which the glasses were filled was arbitrary. The amount of water in each glass was approximately the same. In fact, that was all that was going on. I told the class, even though that was factually true, an incredible learning experience took place. When we began to talk about what people did with this tension resolution system during the day.

During our discussion, some absolutely fantastic insights were brought to the surface. Much of the dialogue concerned what the class did when confronted with the unknown, we began to explore what different people thought at different points during the day.

‘I thought you were going to just drink a lot of water. At first,’ one woman said, ‘but then you didn't drink any water.’

‘What did you think?’ Then I ask her.

‘Well, then I thought that the glasses would be used later to make some kind of music. After I figured that out, I felt a lot better.’

’Why did you feel better?’

‘Because then I knew what was going on.’

‘But you didn't know what was going on.’

‘True. But I thought I did.’

‘But in fact, you did not know what was going on.’ I repeated.

‘Yes. So why did your speculations make you feel better?’”

(And we're going to talk about speculations in just a minute.)

She says, ‘because I don't like not knowing what's going on.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don't know. It just makes me a little nervous.’

‘What are you nervous about? Not being fully in control.’

Just as a side note, I gave a keynote at an online conference last week and I was talking all about the power of the natural law and true principles and how they can change your life. I can't remember how we got into it. Some questions were asked at the end, and I was talking about kind of this idea without really talking about it in depth about how my children are all across the faith spectrum, which we've talked about on this podcast before.

And what that requires of me is holding a lot of tension. We don't have the resolution in my family that I ultimately want, you know, and. I can't, I don't get to be in control all the time. And so what I talked to them about was just letting go and working on the relationship. And one of the women came back with, “I just don't see how I could do that because I just need to be in control.”

This is a huge theme for so many moms that I've talked to and that we've brought through the academy and that we've worked with. Believe me, I am a recovering rescuer. I want to feel in control. I want to think that I can juggle all the pieces and that with enough good teaching and enough good advice that everybody will just make all the perfect decisions, which frankly, the longer I live, the more I realize that I didn't have all the best answers in the first place, and probably not everybody would've been better off taking my advice all the time, quite frankly.

So this is something that I really wanted to hit on for all of us.because I know you moms out there are like me and you want to be in control.The way that you're trying to be in control and manage the tension that you're holding when you don't have outcomes in your home and in your life that you want is through speculation and giving yourself false perceptions that make you feel in control when you're actually not in control. That makes you feel like you know what's going on when you actually don't know what's going on.

So he says to the woman, “‘What are you nervous about?’

And she says, ‘Not being fully in control.’

And he says, ‘Why do you need to be fully in control?’

‘That's a good question. I suppose it's because when I was a kid, I never knew what was going on.’

‘And as an adult, sometimes you still don't know what is going on.’

‘True.’

'Is it okay that sometimes you don't know what's going on?’

‘Yes, but… well…

'When you think you know what's going on, what do you do with that information?’

‘I act appropriately.’”

That’s her answer. ‘I act appropriately.’ What I wrote in my book is, “But it can't be appropriate because you don't actually know. That's what's so ironic, and this is just a human, this is just part of the human condition. We want to know what's going on and we want to act appropriately, which is totally fine. But when we try to manage that need and when we try to alleviate the tension through speculation, we actually cause sometimes more harm than good for ourselves and for other people.”

So he goes on, she says, ‘I act appropriately’

He says, ‘What does that mean?’

‘Oh, it means I won't screw up.’

‘So you think you will screw up if you don't know what's going on?’

‘Yes.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘There were times in the past when I screwed up because I didn't know what was going on.’ ‘Were there ever times when you screwed up, when you did know what was going on?’

‘Uh, yes.’

‘Were there ever any times that you didn't screw up and you didn't know what was going on?’ ‘Yes.’

‘Then I don't see the connection between what you know and whether you screw up.’

'Now that you mention it, neither do I.'

‘So you formed a theory about the glasses because you didn't know what was going on, and you feel nervous when you don't know what is going on. You think you might screw up by not acting ‘appropriately’ knowing what is going on, or at least thinking you know what's going on. Is an action you take to avoid losing control and avoid screwing up?’

‘Yep.’

‘What do you think now?’

‘I'm amazed. I never realized that about myself.’

‘Have you formed a lot of theories about life and about you and about the world?’

‘You bet I have.’

‘What do you think now? I think I'm going to pay more attention to what I really know and what I don't know.’

One of the things I wrote in the book here is we do this all the time in our relationships. We don't like not knowing what's going on, and it's painful to hold the tension. Not blaming. Not speculating. That's the truly mature way to operate, but it requires a capacity to hold tension. So then he goes on to talk to some of the other people, and in the end they come up with these kind of, basically these five ways that people were approaching this tension resolution, problem or system that they were faced with. See if you see yourself in any of these.

Number one, “many people speculate when something is unknown to them. The function of the speculation is not simply to satisfy curiosity, but to give them a sense of security and tenuity. Many of the people in the group came to realize that they often speculate and theorize about many things in their lives.”

And we're going to talk about what we can do instead of speculating, we watch something. The intent, the tension is uncomfortable. We don't have true understanding. And so we speculate. We come to quick conclusions. We create theories and we do this all the time when we gossip. You know, there was a situation in our family recently. We are hearing very third person about a situation that none of us has any firsthand information about the way that it's being fed to us sounds kind of familiar to another situation that happened in the family years ago. So someone in the family made a comment. They speculated and they theorized based on this very limited amount of information and the tension that should be held in a more mature approach to the circumstance, holding tension properly would've been to give this person that's in this situation that looks like their character is being compromised. The more mature thing would've been to hold the tension longer. To give them the benefit of the doubt and to not draw any conclusions yet based on the limited information that we have. But a few people started drawing conclusions immediately, speculating and theorizing by equating this person to a person in the past who genuinely was somewhat evil and vindictive, and did do things for the wrong reasons, and did really genuinely hurt people. We know that because the whole situation has born out and we all have firsthand evidence. We all know the truth. But now in this new situation with very limited information, people are starting to quickly speculate and theorize to manage the tension and the discomfort of the situation.

And they blame. They blame quickly. We do this, we hurt ourselves and we hurt other people in our unwillingness to be patient. To simply hold the tension of the current situation and not try to rush to the resolution too quickly in order to alleviate the discomfort that we feel.

Okay, here's another one way people handle tension.

For some unknown reason the unknown leads them to want more control, power, and authority. I mean, maybe they speculate too, but another thing that they do is to try to get control and people who were drinking the water and putting flowers in it were trying to increase their power over a situation they had no control over by intervening with something that was really none of their business. These weren't their glasses. It wasn't their water, it wasn't their conference. It was really actually none of their business, but they couldn't withhold intervention of some kind in a desperate need to feel in control.

The third group, there were others he said, who formed their sense of identity by what they know, how much they know or what is relevant to know. So some of these people were making it all about them. Their identity was in question when they were engaged in attention resolution system, in a situation that called for them to practice patience. And they weren't up for it, and so they started attacking themselves or thinking about themselves in different or weird or distorted or unhealthy ways.

A fourth were those who seemed not to notice any events regarding the water glasses, but as we explored further, we discovered that they indeed had noticed, but they could not understand what was going on. This created a conflict in them, and they attempted to reduce the conflict by becoming uninvolved. This is a way that I tend to manage tension, is to ignore it, to distract myself away from it, to pretend like it's not happening, or, to get my identity caught up in it, to blame myself about it, to figure out how I need to be different to resolve it.

And the fifth one was others carried around an ideal that they imposed on the water glass situation. “Many of the interpretations, such as water means purity and seven is the universal number are examples of this phenomenon.” So people had different ways, these five different ways that they noticed in this experiment of trying to manage a situation that called upon their ability to practice their patience.

So what do we do instead? Instead of trying to understand everything all the time, gain power and control over situations that are not ours to control, getting our identity all caught up in it or becoming aloof to things that we should pay attention to or that are that we should try to understand, or especially speculating. What can we do instead?

One of the things that the author says is in the creative process, which all of us, you and I moms, we're creating everything. We're creating dinner, we're creating our hairstyles. We're creating the aesthetic in our home. We're creating the environment. We're creating the faithful opportunities. We're creating our own character. We're we're creating the kind of person that we're becoming, and "tension is the engine that generates energy for action.” Tension is vital. We have to intentionally step into tension, which means we have to get better at practicing patience and instead of speculating by placing blame, by equating one thing to another when they don't equal each other. By pretending that something is what it isn't, or trying to control the situation.

Here's what we do instead.

The first thing that we do is we get really, really honest when we find those negative emotions coming up in us, when we see ourselves losing our patience, becoming aggravated, negative, and out of control, when we see that in ourselves, we want to stop, stop and take stock of reality. We want to be honest about what's actually really going on and what we actually really have control over because we don't have control over a lot. But we also have control over everything in the sense that we have complete control of ourselves. I would encourage you around this concept to go back to The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Read the first habit and to look at the circle of concern and the circle of control that Covey helps us to see and to recognize that the first thing we have to do is work on us. Work on you.

If you are frustrated at the way your children are behaving, if you're frustrated at the way your house looks, if you are worried about your finances, whatever those things are in your life that are causing you this emotional discomfort where you don't have resolution, recognize that the negative emotions mean there's something you care about. And the tension means that there's something you want. You would not feel these emotions of discomfort and negativity unless you cared about yourself. You cared about your home. You cared about your children. You cared about your marriage. You cared about your personal growth. That is a good thing. These are indicators that you care.

So embrace that. Recognize that you care, and that that's a beautiful thing about you. If you didn't care, you would be indifferent to everything. You wouldn't get up in a ruffle, you know, you wouldn't get upset about things. And the tension means those negative emotions, the anger and the upset are drawn from some kind of vision.

You hold an ideal a. An expectation, a goal.

So what you've got to do is get really honest about the fact that you care about something and that you have a vision of where you want to be, of where you want that thing to be, what you want your kitchen sink to look like of the way you want your children to behave. But you've got to get honest about reality and what it is in this ideal that you're holding this unstated, maybe even to this moment, unrealized expectation you're holding, get honest about it. Get honest about the fact that you keep getting frustrated with your kids, that you don't like their behavior, because you care about their behavior and you hold an ideal of what their behavior ought to be. You are having a hard time holding the tension between what the outcomes are right now and what you want them to be.

You want resolution. You want them to behave differently. You want to cross the finish line on the ideals that you hold. What are those ideals? What is it that you're wanting from them? What is this expectation or this goal that you may have never even realized that you're hanging onto? Journal it. Write it down.

Get super honest and clear about what that is, and look at it honestly, and spend some time in Covey and look clearly at your true locus of control. And then set a real goal. Something that's not this unrealistic ideal, but that's tangible and realistic for you and your children, somewhere that you can get to in the near or distant future through the next thing that you're going to do.

And that is take the baby steps. So once you've assessed the reality. Of why you care and what it is that you care about and the ideal that you're trying to get to, then you can set a better goal and you can have a vision. Now, the tension resolution system you're going to create is now going to be based in the reality of your life. It’s going to be based on things you can legitimately control. You’re going to stop measuring yourself and your kids against an unvocalized, sometimes even subconscious ideals that you didn't even realize that you had. And you're now going to have a realistic measuring stick of things that you can control so that you can actually make real progress, and you can actually hold the tension to a point of resolution that's attainable, and this is how your personal growth is attained.

This is how you alleviate unnecessary, unrealistic tension that's never going to go away for true patience as you act in diligence toward a desired vision. And what you're going to do as you work toward this vision is instead of speculating and theorizing, you're going to observe. You are going to notice positive changes.

You're going to take time every day to ask yourself the next right baby step toward your vision that's measurable, and then you're going to assess how you did today. The goal was that you were going to teach a principle to your children and then put some kind of clear benefit and consequence in place around that principle with your children.

Then mission accomplished. You took the baby step toward having a more harmonious peace filled home. Now, what do you need to do tomorrow to continue to work toward this vision? What's the next baby step? How do you need to act tomorrow? And how can you hold the tension and be proud of your own behavior and your own responses working on the peace that you actually have control over?

Okay. A couple thoughts to finish this up here.

As you learn to practice more patience by recognizing the negative emotions and then being honest about reality, assessing what it is that you care about and what it is you ultimately want. Then working on what's truly within the locus of your control. Observing instead of speculating, taking baby steps each day toward your vision, and then eventually getting there. You are engaging in a beautiful, creative process, and now you understand what it means to practice patience, how it is that you can hold tension until you have resolution. And that is the achievement of the goal that you're working on. And then you do that over and over and over again, and that's how you take control of yourself, of your life, of the life that you are creating.

Let's end with this.

“Most people do not think about forming the end result before they take action, but when you do, you can act with more direction, more efficiency, and more effectiveness.”

When you practice patience, you hold the tension that is the lifeblood of all growth in life, and you are choosing to increase your ability to hold greater and greater amounts of tension, which helps you grow more and more as an individual and it increases the impact that you're able to have on others around you, because now you can accomplish greater and greater goals through the mastery of your own patience.

Thanks so much for joining me. I'll see you next time.