Day 56 – One Teaching – Patience

Along the path of personal mastery, we don’t always get exactly what we want right when we want it.  It is for this reason that we say that patience is a virtue.  Unfortunately, patience is not something that comes naturally for me.  On Day 39, we talked about the DISC assessment personality profile and specifically the “C”, which stands for conscientious.  The other area where I scored highly was in “D” which stands for Dominance or Decisiveness.  It is a strength for leaders who need to be able to make quick decisions.  My coach taught me that the greatest fear of a person who scores high in “D” is wasting time.  She also told me that high “D” people anger more easily than low “D’s.”  Hmm, this sounds like the opposite of patience to me.

Oxford Languages via Google search defines patience as, “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble or suffering without getting angry or upset.”  I think it’s fair to say someone with the capacity to accept or tolerate delay is not concerned with wasting time.  The part about getting angry speaks for itself.  Keeping all of this in mind, it makes sense to me why patience is something I have had to work at.

Recently I had a discussion with my coach about some business goals we had been working on together.  She sensed I was getting frustrated because my team and I were not reaching some sales goals we had been pursuing.  I have been accused of being a control freak, and when I don’t get immediate results, I tend to be quick to try something else.  Enter the discussion about patience.  Actually, she asked me what I thought was really needed in this situation and the word patience was the first thing that came to me.  My heart and soul knew that was the answer.  Although my head was still a bit frustrated.

She went on to explain that patience is not just waiting.  She said that patience is what we do while we wait.  The uncontrolled ego does not like to wait.  Therefore, we can practice patience as a skill for managing the ego.  While I am waiting, am I worrying?  Am I thinking up plan B?  Or am I trusting that I’ve done my part and letting the universe take it from here?

Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash

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