“Practice patience: It is the shortest path to success. Patience will keep you calm in the face of difficulties, and will enable you to meet each obstacle effectively.”

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By.Dr.Mahboob ali khan Phd
“Practice patience: It is the shortest path to success. Patience will keep you calm in the face of
difficulties, and will enable you to meet each obstacle effectively.”
What is patience? I like to start with the dictionary. "Patience: the
capacity to accept or tolerate delay, difficulty, or annoyance without
getting angry or upset." I don’t know anyone whose life is free of these
three. In fact, I can’t recall a single day in my own life when at least
one of them didn't make an appearance.
For many years, my reaction to the presence of any one of the three was
to get “angry”—or at least “upset.” Then I realized that this response
served only to make an already stressful and unpleasant situation
worse. So I began making a conscious effort to respond to “delay,
difficulty, or annoyance” differently. Sometimes the best I could do
was “tolerate” their presence. But I kept at it and, with practice, I
became better able to “accept” them open-heartedly as an inevitable
part of life.When I could do this—tolerate and sometimes even accept
delay, difficulty, or annoyance—I noticed two things. First, being
patient is a way of treating myself with compassion. Compassion is
the act of reaching out to those who are suffering—including ourselves.
I definitely suffer when I’m impatient, because lack of patience is
a stress response to whatever is going on in my life. I can feel the stress
in both my mind and my body. And so, cultivating patience is a way of
taking care of myself, which is the essence of self-compassion.

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Second, I noticed that being patient gave rise to a feeling of
equanimity—a calmness of mind that makes it easier to ride life’s ups
and downs without being tossed about like a boat in a storm. Seeing the
correlation between patience and enhanced self-compassion and
equanimity convinced me of the value of this practice. I thought,
“Hmm. Less suffering and stress, coupled with more calm acceptance
of life as it is…sounds good.” Here’s how I recommend that you
undertake the practice of patience. (Note: This is an approach to
transforming thoughts and emotions that I set out more fully in my
books, How to Wake Up: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide to Navigating Joy
and Sorrow and How to Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness: A
Mindful Guide)
1. Recognize that impatience has arisen.
This may not be easy at first. When things aren’t going our way (for
example, we’re stuck in traffic), we tend to think that the cause of our
impatience is external to us—what’s going out “out there.” But, of
course, the cause is what’s going on in our own minds—that is,
our response to whatever circumstances we’re facing. So start by
setting the intention to watch for impatience arising in your own mind
as a response to not getting what you want right away.
You may know some of your triggers already: being put on hold for a
long time; getting stuck in a long line; struggling to figure out a
computer problem; facing an extended wait at the doctor’s office;

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having to listen to someone take what seems to be an interminably long
time to explain something simple (this last one being a trait of mine that
tests my own family’s patience!).
Notice how impatience arises when we’re not getting our way—
specifically when people or our environment aren’t conforming to our
expectations, even in circumstances over which we have no control (for
example, the flow of traffic or the length of a line). Our expectations
are often out of synch with reality. I can think of four ways in which
this is true, and all four can be triggers for impatience.
First, we tend to expect the environment to conform to our
expectations: no traffic jams; no absence of parking spaces near our
destination; no long lines; no airport delays; no waiting too long for
food to arrive at a restaurant.
Second, we tend to expect people to conform to our expectations. They
ought to behave the way we think they should behave. “That woman
ahead of me in the check-out line should not be making small talk with
the cashier.” “If he said he’d phone at 3:00, he should phone at 3:00.”
Even if we’re “right” (it is polite, after all, to call at the time you say
you will), the fact remains that people often don’t live up to our
expectations.
Third, our expectations are often unrealistic when it comes to mastering
new skills, whether it’s taking up a new craft or figuring out a new
computer application or learning a new do-it-yourself fix-it skill. We

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think we should be able to master new skills quickly, no matter how
foreign or difficult they are to us.
Fourth, our expectations are almost always unrealistic when it comes
to what goes on in our minds. We think we should be able to control
what thoughts and what emotions arise. But unwelcome thoughts and
emotions pop up all the time. It’s the nature of the mind to think and to
emote; in my experience, there’s no stopping it. Certainly being
impatient doesn’t put a stop to it!
Think about these four categories of expectations and see if you can
pinpoint which ones you tend to be unrealistic about in your own life.
This alone can help you recognize when you’re responding with
impatience.
2. Investigate how impatience feels in your mind and in your body.
Allowing yourself to really feel the impatience is a major step toward
accepting its presence. This is important because, in my experience, I
can’t begin to transform a stressful mental state until I accept that I’m
caught up in it. So, work on becoming well-acquainted with how
impatience feels. Is your mind calm or agitated? Is your body relaxed
or tensed? I have yet to experience impatience as pleasant in either my
mind or my body. And the realization that it feels unpleasant helps
motivate me to try and change the way I respond when I’m faced with
“delay, difficulty, or annoyance”—our three friends from the dictionary
definition.
3. Begin to transform impatience into patience.
This takes practice—patient practice. And because patience is an act of
self-compassion, I hope you’ll treat yourself with compassion over
your inability to be patient at times. That said, here are some strategies
to help transform impatience into patience.
Let’s start with those times when the environment or people aren’t
conforming to your expectations: for example, you’re stuck in a traffic
jam or you find yourself behind that person in the check-out line who’s

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chatting with the cashier. First, notice that you’re responding with
impatience. Second, pay attention to how it feels in your mind and in
your body. Then ask yourself: “Is there anything I can do to change the
situation without making matters worse for myself or others?” If the
answer is “no” (which it almost always will be), then see if you can find
what I’ll call “the good” in the situation. By this I mean, begin to focus
on something pleasant or interesting while you’re waiting.
This is a mindfulness practice, meaning you’re making a conscious
choice—backed up by effort—to pay attention to everything that’s
going on in your field of awareness. When I feel impatience arise, I can
almost always find something in my present moment experience that
arouses my curiosity or interest. This allows me to respond, not in
“anger” or “upset” to what’s going on, but instead, with patience.
In a traffic jam, it might be checking out the different makes and models
and ages of the cars on the road; it might be begining to chat with
another person in the car; it might be finding a radio station to listen to.
If I’m in that check-out line, it might be noticing with amusement the
ridiculous headlines on those sensationalistic mags that sit in racks at
the cashier stand; it might be looking at the people around me—how
everyone looks different and has a whole life story of their own that I
know nothing about; it might even be eavesdropping on the content of
the chatter that’s holding me up!

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In fact, I try to cultivate friendliness toward those chatterers—to enjoy
how they’re enjoying each other’s company. After all, what’s another
minute or two in line? If, like me, you have trouble standing for long,
you can look for something to lean on or take a wide stance with your
legs so you’re better balanced. Sometimes I bring a cane.
My point is that, yes, our first choice may be to institute a “no traffic
jam on the freeway” rule and a “no chatting at the check-out counter”
directive, but most of the time in life, we don’t get our first choice.
When this happens, if the alternatives are to get upset and angry versus
finding a way to make the experience enjoyable, or at least tolerable, I
know which one feels better to me.
Then we have those unrealistic expectations about mastering new
skills. That expectation partially stems from our cultural conditioning
to hurry hurry hurry no matter what we’re doing. Yet, if we were to
proceed more slowly and patiently, not only would we enjoy ourselves
more, but we’re likely to do a better job of mastering the skill in
question.
Finally, about those unrealistic expectations that we should be able to
control our minds. Instead of getting impatient (“upset“ or “angry”)
about what arises in our minds, can we work on holding unwelcome
thoughts and emotions more lightly—even sometimes with humor over
the mind’s unruliness? Doing this is a compassionate response to what
arises in the mind. In my new book, How to Wake Up, I quote a passage

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from one of the first Buddhist books I ever read, Mindfulness in Plain
English by Bhante Gunaratana. He said this about the mind:
[Sometime] you will come face to face with the sudden and shocking
realization that you are completely crazy. Your mind is a shrieking,
gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill,
utterly out of control and hopeless. No problem.
I love this quotation for two reasons. First, I find it reassuring to know
that I’m not alone in having a shrieking, gibbering, madhouse on
wheels for a mind. Second, I think “No problem.” I take “no problem”
to mean that I can learn to be patient with this “crazy” mind. I can learn
not to get upset and angry when unwelcome thoughts and emotions
arise, but instead, to calmly accept their presence, knowing that with
time the universal law of impermanence will help me out. Conditions
will change…and so will my mind.
We can transform impatience into patience. It’s well-worth the effort
because being patient is a way of treating ourselves with compassion
and it also helps us calmly accept things as they are…and that always
feels good.