About Patience...

Added to this is the constant buzzing of our cell phones.  The virtual world keeps coming at us with its barrage of Instagram, Tweets, texts – an untouchable world where there hardly ever is a real, face-to-face, meaningful interaction with a "live" person.

We too often feel we must react immediately.  It’s an “impatient world” that wants answers and solutions. Constant calls for decisions and action provoke us and have the potential to ruin our day. The truth is that nothing is as important as we are led to believe, AND we forget that it can change in “five minutes”.

This restless and frenzied electronic world has a way of bleeding right into the fabric of our physical world relationships…and sap our energy. Before we know it, negative thoughts are creeping in and we may rush to judgement of the many who cross our path, be it in person or online. 
  
Where do we start to “untangle” this web, that, more likely than not, controls too much of our lives? We have to start with ourselves first. Some of the answers are found in that overused word “patience”. Patience is like having a “PAUSE" button which helps us get our bearings on life’s constant demands. It may mean using that powerful, little word, “NO”, or “Let me THINK about it”. This helps buy time, balance, breathe and take back our power.

When tempted to answer quickly to a text or a call, it helps greatly to “go from the head to the heart and then out of the mouth”, or “out to the fingers on the keyboard”.  Those seconds of patience have a way of defusing quite a lot of unnecessary hurt or conflict. Taking an hour, or even a day buys time. And many issues, that seemed so critical, often lose their urgency - with a bit of a pause they may even go away completely. 
  
Learning to be patient in a virtual, more robotic world helps us with ourselves. It comforts us - it soothes us to be more thoughtful, kinder and more tolerant.  Fear, aggravation or anger which can bubble up quickly in a crisis always affect us physically.  Patience lowers our blood pressure. And that begins with pausing, taking those deep breaths, going out into the fresh air – we now see issues more clearly, not just from one side, but from all sides. 
  
Cultivating patience is powerful and rewarding for us on all levels of our being. We have so much to gain with these simple tools. We are spectacular human beings and deserve so much more personal caring!