The gift of patience! Have you ever lost your temper and yelled at someone at work or perhaps at a friend or loved one? Or, maybe you’re waiting in line and need to get out ASAP but the person in front of you is taking forever? Or, another example – you’re driving and don’t understand why nobody is moving so you honk your horn.
What does patience teach us? On a personal level, I’ve always been the type of person to hold my tongue and have found both positive and negative events have occurred because of being patient. On the positive side, one example I will use is when I was waiting in line at Qdoba. There was a line of about 15 people this particular day and I was trying to catch a bus so I was hoping to grab some food and get out ASAP. It didn’t really happen that way and I did end up missing my bus. The good news turned out to be I received a free meal due to the long line that day and the cashier was being especially nice. Even better news was on this cold, winter day even though I missed the bus another came around out of the blue which ultimately made my day because of the weather. So, two great things happened this day due to my being patient and not complaining. Keeping a positive frame of mind and not focusing on missing the bus or having to wait for the individuals ahead of me resulted in a free treat and not missing my transportation. The point I’m trying to make is how often do we jump to the negative? Or, assume things that result in hurting ourselves or others? When we could have just taken a breath and attracted the positive into our lives.
Now for the negative. Waiting for coffee in the morning can be stressful. On a typical day at 6:45am at Starbucks, there’s a line of about 10 people, give or take. I enjoy having a vanilla latte before work on special occasions when I’m feeling especially sleepy. One day, on a trip to Starbucks I’m standing in a long line waiting for my turn and when I get to the front I place my order and wait for my drink. Unfortunately, the lady who took my order didn’t push my car far enough for the barista to see so I had to wait longer than usual to get my coffee. And as I watch other people who got to Starbucks after me – I stand there wondering, what’s going on – I was here “first”. Being your typical impatient person, I go to the front and ask the barista when my drink will be made and she replies, “you’re up next, just a couple more minutes”. Filled with frustration and stress about being late to work, I begin to think of all the things that are about to go wrong and everything that could have gone wrong that morning did. The barista made my coffee wrong, I was late to work, and worst of all I carried that bad attitude with me for the rest of the day.
The moral of my story, when comparing the two scenarios is that when I wasn’t internally stressing out/being impatient on not having something done my way, I didn’t lose anything but gained everything that I wanted. Whereas, when I was being extremely impatient, the very thing I did not want-happened! How often is it that we just take a minute and breathe and say to ourselves, “everything is going to be okay and work out” and don’t focus on all those negative possibilities.
Samantha Joyce Boneck 