Sometimes life feels overwhelming doesn’t it?
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, coworkers and your health.
Remember our grandparents saying they walked uphill both ways to school? It’s a great metaphor to exemplify that challenges require hard work, persistence, and commitment. especially when life presents itself in a way that catches us off guard. Pain, relationship difficulty, screaming kids, sickness, low energy, or financial stress can feel like major roadblocks to achieving the life, family and health that you want.
Fortunately there is this thing called patience.
Patience is not only the cornerstone for well-being, it requires diligent and persistent work to turn it into a healthy and usable skill in your toolbox of wellbeing strategies.
To master patience, is to master your body, emotions, mind and energy. It’s a way of being that is tuned in to a trust that life will work out and practicing these three steps can make life a little more harmonious and enjoyable helping you to stay energized.
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; To let yourself be consumed.
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.
3. Breathe into it. When you try to fix and resist what is happening, it’s easy to contract the body, especially the hip flexors and lower pelvis. The reason this occurs is due to a primal defence mechanism of survival when you perceive a threat. So the third step is to breathe into the belly, as deep and low down as possible to connect with the layers of contraction. As you find and discover your rhythm here, you will notice 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. Remind yourself that you do have patience, and that you just need to practice the skill.
Often, if you don’t access patients you will run yourself into suffering and feeling helpless. Patience is the gateway to empowerment, when a situation or circumstance feels lost, hopeless, or like you are just so stuck. Life is what life is. Taking it in, closing your eyes, and breathing into it, is often the most effective option if you want to keep your energy high and move to a state of power.
Stay alive, stay well,
Dr. Steve
