Sometimes life just doesn’t look the way we want it to.
How to practice patience is an important skill set to learn in any area of life, especially when it comes to working with family, kids, and coworkers AND your health.
Life itself, can be challenging. It requires hard work, persistence, and commitment to design life the way you want it to look. Especially when life presents itself in a way that is less than desirable. Pain, stress, relationship hardships, screaming kids, sickness, low energy, or financial stress can feel like major roadblocks to achieving the family and health that you want.
Fortunately there is this thing called patience.
And it is not only the cornerstone for well-being, it requires diligent and persistent work to turn it into a healthy, vital skill and component in your toolbox of wellbeing strategies.
When we were kids, when life didn’t look like we wanted it to, we would tend to quickly lash out, get angry, project and express our energy to those that were closest or nearest us. This was an feeble attempt to control our environment. Unfortunately, the mind tries, but doesn’t succeed in changing life right then and there. So that means, we must alter our perspective first, before anything can look different in our reality.
To master patience, is to master an ultimate flow with life.
So let’s get right to it. How to practice patience? Well this skill comprises a few simple steps that can make life a little more harmonious and enjoyable for yourself, helping you to find your flow.
1. Take it all in. Absorb what life is giving you, suck it all in, feel the storm of life, the chaos, the uncertainty or the irritation rising and say ‘bring it on’. Embrace exactly what life is throwing at you with a poised reverence for its power. It’s important at this first step to acknowledge life itself. To be with what it is offering you; an experience of some sort.
2. Close your eyes. By closing your eyes, it forces the nervous system to move into a ‘parasympathetic’ pattern and move the body from fight or flight into one that is more relaxed. The point being that closing your eyes give you a quick advantage over yourself and your defensiveness. If you want to stay defensive and lash out, keep your eyes open. As you train yourself with greater patience, this skill of quickly closing your eyes will begin to trigger your nervous system to slow itself down and become less protective.
3. Breathe into it. When you resist what is happening, it’s easy to contract the body, especially the hip flexors and lower pelvis. The reason this occurs is a matter of the nervous system trying to defend a potential threat, and when you see life opposite the way you want it, believe me, that’s seen as a threat. So the third step is to breathe into the belly, as deep and low down as possible to connect with the deepest layers of contraction. As you find and discover your rhythm here, you will find that you can alter your perspective from one of defence and protection, to one of safety and patience.
The reality is, sometimes you will lash out. Don’t beat yourself up for that, just remember that next time is a new opportunity to cultivate the skill of patience. Don’t say you don’t have patience, you just need to practice. It’s within you. It just needs to be trained to be expressed.
Love and light,
Dr. Steve
