The Power of Patience: How This Old-Fashioned Virtue Can Improve Your Life (Meditations on Patience, Patience Book, Gift for Men and Women) (Medievalism) - Softcover

Ryan, M.J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573245992 ISBN 13: 9781573245999

Publisher: Conari Press, 2013

Synopsis

Find Joy in a Busy World by Practicing Patience

A deeper look at an old-fashioned quality. We’ve all heard the phrase, “Patience is a virtue,” and doubtless responded with a sigh, as usually it’s spoken with a tone of reproach. But this virtue carries with it a wealth of wisdom that can actually help us find happiness in our day-to-day. Author M.J. Ryan details just what living with patience can bring to our lives and how it can change us for the better.

Slow the rush. Things move at a quick pace in our society, in both our work lives and social lives. Not only are we forced to keep up, but we have been conditioned to expect instant gratification. Because of this, we find ourselves getting flustered by the smallest setbacks or hold ups―whether it’s a slow server at a restaurant or rush-hour traffic. Ryan shares how patience is the very antidote to the stress that our fast-paced lifestyle results in.

Reclaim our priorities. By reining in our aggravation when things don’t happen instantaneously, we give ourselves time to breathe and think more clearly. We make better use of our days and allow ourselves to make decisions based on how they align with our priorities, instead of focusing on how fast we can get tasks done. With Ryan’s help, we can learn to foster a patient outlook and find joy and fulfillment in the present moment.

This book by M.J. Ryan is a fulfilling and beneficial self-care gift for women and men everywhere. Throughout it, she offers readers:

• Straightforward, believable instructions for developing a habit of patience
• A source of stress-relief and guide to happier living
• Ways to find peaceful moments amidst the hustle and bustle that each day brings

Readers of Present Over Perfect, When Less Becomes More, The Joy of Missing Out, and Stillness is Key will enjoy M.J. Ryan’s The Power of Patience.

About this title

About the Author

Known internationally as an expert on change, M.J. Ryan works as an executive coach to senior executives and entrepreneurs around the world to accelerate business success and personal fulfillment. She combines a practical approach gained as the CEO of a book publishing company with methodologies from neuroscience, positive psychology and asset-focused learning to help clients and readers more easily meet their goals. Her clients include Royal Dutch Shell, Microsoft, Time, the U.S. military, and Aon Hewitt. She's a partner with the Levo League career network and the lead venture coach at SheEO, an organization offering a new funding and support model for female entrepreneurs. She's the founder of Conari Press, creator of the New York Times bestselling Random Acts of Kindness series, and author of many books, including, Habit Changers: 81 Game-Changing Mantras to Mindfully Realize Your Goals.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

THE POWER OF Patience

How this Old-Fashioned Virtue Can Improve Your Life

By M. J. RYAN

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

Copyright © 2013 M. J. Ryan
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-599-9

Contents

1 HOW THIS OLD-FASHIONED VIRTUE CAN IMPROVE YOUR LIFE, 
Stick-to-It-Ness: The Power of Persistence, 
No Reason to Stress: The Power of Serenity, 
That's OK: The Power of Acceptance, 
2 PATIENCE'S GIFTS, 
Patience Creates Excellence, 
Patience Brings Us into Harmony with the Cycles of Nature, 
Patience Helps Us Make Better Decisions, 
Patience Connects Us to Hope, 
Patience Helps Us Live Longer and More Stress-Free, 
Patience Helps Us Waste Less Time, Energy, and Money, 
Patience Gets Us More of What We Want, 
Patience Guards the Door to Anger, 
Patience Gives Us Greater Tolerance and Empathy, 
Patience Helps Us Have Happier Love Relationships, 
Patience Makes Us Better Parents, 
Patience Teaches the Power of Receptivity, 
Patience Is the Heart of Civility, 
Patience Grows Our Souls, 
3 THE ATTITUDES OF PATIENCE, 
I'm Still Learning, 
Patience Is a Decision, 
This Too Shall Pass, 
The Screws Are Just as Important as the Wings, 
Waiting Is Part of Being Alive, 
It's Better to Work At It Than to Buy Your Way Out of It, 
Where Are You Hurrying To?, 
Boredom Is All in Our Heads, 
Remember Rule Number Six, 
Tuning Out Is as Important as Tuning In, 
What Does This Matter in the Larger Scheme of Things?, 
People Are Only Human, 
Some Things Are Worth Waiting For, 
It Will Work Out, 
It Takes as Long as It Takes, 
There's More Than One Right Way, 
Welcome, Teachers of Patience, 
Enough Is Enough, 
Be Here Now, 
4 THE PRACTICES OF PATIENCE, 
Tell Yourself the Truth About Where You Are Right Now, 
Tune In to Yourself in the Morning, 
When Am I Patient? Let Me Count the Ways, 
Know Your Impatience Triggers, 
Learn Your Early-Warning Signs, 
Take a Breather, 
Climb Down to the Base of the Tree, 
Road Sage, Not Road Rage, 
Issue a Storm Warning to Children, 
Tap Into Your Inner Wisdom, 
Keep Your Blood Sugar Level Up, 
Reframe the Situation, 
Find Something Else to Do, 
Practice with Aging Parents and Other Elders, 
Respond from Your Heart, 
Tell Yourself You Have All the Time You Need, 
Do a Risk Analysis, 
Keep Your Eyes on the Prize, 
Underwhelm Yourself, 
Ask Yourself: Is This Thing Still Flying?, 
5 TWENTY SIMPLE PATIENCE BOOSTERS, 
6 ABOVE ALL, BE MERCIFUL WITH YOURSELF, 
My Thanks, 
Bibliography, 

CHAPTER 1

HOW THIS OLD-FASHIONED VIRTUE CAN IMPROVE YOUR LIFE

Dear God,I pray for patience.And I want it RIGHT NOW!

Oren Arnold

Consider THIS:

• Some McDonald's are promising lunch in ninety seconds or it's free.

• The average doctor visit now lasts eight minutes.

• An over-the-counter drug is marketed for women who "don't have time for a yeastinfection."

• Politicians currently take a mere 8.2 seconds to answer a question, regardlessof the complexity of the topic.

• A popular all-you-can-eat buffet in Tokyo charges by the minute—the faster youeat, the cheaper it is.

• The head of Hitachi's portable computer division motivates his workers with theslogan: "Speed is God, and time is the devil."

• Developers of high rises have discovered an upward limit to the number offloors—the amount of time people are willing to wait for elevators. Fifteenseconds is what feels best; if it stretches to forty, we freak out.

All of us these days, it seems, spend our lives rushing around. We're inconstant motion, and we expect everything and everyone around us to go faster aswell. As technology watcher David Shenk notes, between our smartphones and ourspeed dials, email and FedEx, "quickness has disappeared from our culture. Wenow only experience degrees of slowness." Writer James Gleick says it morebluntly—we're all suffering from "hurry sickness," a term first coined by MeyerFriedman, the identifier of the Type A personality.

I know I have it. I can't stand how slowly my computer boots up. I actuallytimed it recently; it took one minute and I was fidgeting the whole time. I'mthe person pushing the elevator button more than once to make it come faster. Ihit the pound key to bypass the message on other people's voice mail. And I usethe one-minute button on the microwave because it's quicker than punching in thetime myself.

This is how bad I've got it. Yesterday, I went to my local copy shop. I made mycopies and was standing in line, waiting to pay. The young man behind thecounter was struggling to help a very old lady figure out how to send a packageto her grandchild. There's one other person in line in front of me. My innermonologue goes like this: Lines, I hate lines. Why can't they get enough help inhere? (Fume.) Why can't they at least post how much they charge for copies so Icould pay without waiting? (A minute passes. More fuming.) I don't have time forthis. I've got more important things to do. I can't just stand here. I have toget home and write this book on patience.

I can't take it anymore. I blurt out from my place in line, "How much for acopy?" "Ten cents," replies the flustered young man. Flinging down a dollar formy forty-cent purchase, I storm out of the store, the irony of the situation notoccurring to me until I am driving away.

Another word for hurry sickness is impatience, and I'm pretty sure I'm not theonly one suffering from it. Road rage, violence of all sorts, blowups at theoffice, divorce, yelling at our kids ... all of these and many other of theworld's ills can be traced at least in part to a lack of patience.

A while ago the state of California ran public service announcements to "slowfor the cone zone." It was a campaign to get drivers to slow from sixty-five tofifty-five miles per hour in construction areas because so many workers havebeen killed. The ads informed listeners that the time difference between goingfifty-five and sixty-five in a one-mile construction area is ten seconds. Peopleare getting killed because we're not willing to get somewhere ten-seconds-a-milelater!

Indeed it appears that the faster things go, the less patience we are able tomuster. This is a problem because life inevitably has a certain degree of delayin the form of lines, traffic jams, and automated message systems. Moreimportant, our lack of patience creates difficulties because the more complex oflife's challenges—illness, disability, relationship conflicts, job crises,parenting issues, to name a few—require that we practice patience in order notmerely to cope, but to grow in love and wisdom.

Without patience, we can't truly learn from the lessons life throws at us; we'reunable to mature. We remain at the stage of irritable babies, unable to delaygratification more than momentarily, unable to work toward what we truly want inany dedicated way. If we want to live wider and deeper lives, not just fasterones, we have to practice patience—patience with ourselves, with other people,and with the big and small circumstances of life itself.

I know we're longing to put more patience in our lives because I've publishedmore than two hundred books and written twenty-two. Never before had people saidto me so emphatically, "I need that!" when I told them what I was working on.But with this book, every person who heard of it said something to that effect.The world is going faster and faster and we are all trying to keep up. Neverbefore has patience been more needed—and never has it been in such short supply.

But we can change that. With the right attitudes and a bit of practice, we canlearn to harness the power of patience in our lives. If I, a speeded-up, Type A,overachieving middle-aged woman can do it, so can you. It's a combination ofmotivation (wanting to), awareness (paying attention to our inner landscape),and cultivation (practicing).

We can do it because patience is a human quality that can be strengthened. Wehave what we need. We're patient already—how else did we get through school,learn to love, find a job? We're just not always aware of what helps us bepatient, what triggers our impatience, or what to do when our patience wearsthin.

The most important thing to know is that patience is something you do, notsomething you have or don't have. It's like a muscle. We all have muscles, butsome people are stronger than others because they work out.

The same is true with patience. Some of us may be better at it right now, buteach of us can develop more with practice. That's what this book is all about.

The Power of Patience looks at the importance of patience—what it can do for us,why it's so crucial now, and how to become more patient. It does this from abroad spiritual and inspirational point of view, using my own stories as well asideas from centuries of wisdom on the topic from around the world. It springsfrom my quest to live a happy and meaningful life, and my passion to help othersdo the same.

This has been a lifelong search for me, but it began to take shape about twentyyears ago, when I, as the executive editor of Conari Press, put together alittle book with some friends called Random Acts of Kindness. It seemed like agood idea at the time—let's do nice little things for strangers—but when I beganto see and hear about the effects it was having, I began to sense I had stumbledonto something very important. Suddenly I was inundated with letters from peopletelling me of the joy they had experienced as either a doer or a receiver ofthese acts. The letter I will never forget was from a high school student whosaid he was going to kill himself, until he read our book and decided that maybelife was worth living.

I became fascinated with the power of kindness to create happiness, and went onto help write a series of books on the topic. And I began to try to become morekind, both to strangers and those I am close to. And lo and behold, just likethe boy who didn't kill himself, I got happier.

Then I began to wonder, If kindness can have such a positive effect, what otherqualities right under our noses could have similar results? I turned myattention to gratitude, and discovered that the more I cultivated a sense ofappreciation for all that I had, the happier and less fearful I was. Again, Iwrote about my experiences, this time in Attitudes of Gratitude, which alsoseemed to strike a chord. And once again, I received many letters, this timeabout the power of gratitude.

My study of gratitude, the awareness of all that we are receiving, led menaturally to generosity, the giving of ourselves and our resources to someoneelse, in The Giving Heart, which then led me, naturally, to patience. For themore we cultivate patience, the happier and more peaceful we are, even if thingsdon't always turn out the way we want.

Using a bit more patience, I could have waited calmly for the (maybe) fiveminutes it would have taken to pay at the copy shop. I would not have had thosenegative feelings of irritation and anger, and I would not have upset the otherpeople in the store. My blood pressure would have remained low, my immune systemstrong. I would have been more content—even while waiting!

Indeed, the longer I study and practice patience, the more I've come to see thatit is a crucial factor in whether we have satisfying lives or not. Patiencegives us self-control, the capacity to stop and be in the present moment. Fromthat place we can make wise choices. Patience helps us be more loving towardothers, more at ease with the circumstances of our lives, and more able to getwhat we want. It constantly rewards us with the fruits of maturity and wisdom:healthier relationships, higher-quality work, and peace of mind. It accomplishesthis magic by bringing together three essential qualities of mind and heart thatallow us to be and do our best: persistence, serenity, and acceptance.

STICK-TO-IT-NESS: THE POWER OF PERSISTENCE

Patience gives us stick-to-it-ness, the ability to work steadily toward ourgoals and dreams. Recent research in emotional intelligence demonstrates thatthe effect of such persistence can equal many IQ points. Asian students in theUnited States are thought to be, on average, within one or two IQ points ofcaucasians. But because they are usually taught persistence when young, they endup, as a group, behaving as though they have a much higher average IQ and aredisproportionately represented in top universities and highly intellectualprofessions.

I once read an interview with the founder of Fast Company magazine, one of thefew dot-com–related media still standing after the dot bust. He had had an ideato create a magazine that reflected the new ideas of the times and he pursued itdespite huge obstacles. He borrowed against his personal credit cards andstormed the country, trying to get investors. No takers. But he passionatelybelieved in his idea and refused to give up. Literally the day he was down tohis last dime and had run out of options, he made the connection that led to thefounding of the magazine—and ultimately to his selling it to a publishingconglomerate for a huge sum.

Stories abound about folks who persisted despite the odds, before finallyachieving great success. Walt Disney, for instance, was turned down 302 timesbefore he got financing for Disneyland. George Lucas put up his own money tomake Star Wars because no one believed in his vision. By the time the movie cameout, he was completely broke. But he ended up becoming phenomenally wealthyprecisely because he had been unable to sell any of the rights to the film orsequels.

Patiently continuing on despite obstacles doesn't mean that we will necessarilyreap the kind of huge reward Mr. Fast Company, Walt Disney, or George Lucas did.But it sure increases the odds that we will make our own personal dreams cometrue, whatever they are.

NO REASON TO STRESS: THE POWER OF SERENITY

Patience also gives us calmness of spirit. With patience, our inner experienceis more like a still pond than a raging river. Rather than being thrown intoanger, panic, or fear by every circumstance life throws at us—a canceled plane,a missed deadline by a workmate, our spouse forgetting to do an errand—we areable to put it into some kind of perspective that allows us to keep our cool.

With this composure, rather than being the miserable kvetch who upsets everyonearound us, we're the ones people look to for comfort and humor when things goawry. Jesuit priest and author Anthony de Mello describes this attitude when hewrites, "All is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well."

With patience, we are more able to stay calm on the inside no matter what ishappening on the outside. We trust in our capacity to deal with whatever comesour way. And that trust gives great peace of mind.

One reason for this is that a synonym for patience is self-possession. I lovethat word; it helps me remember that, with patience, we are in charge of ourselves. We can choose how to respond to a given event, rather than beinghijacked by our emotions. In this way, patience is like a keel on a boat—itallows us to keep our stability in the stormiest of seas while continuing tomove in the direction we desire.

THAT'S OK: THE POWER OF ACCEPTANCE

Patience also gives us the ability to put up graciously with obstacles in ourpath, to respond to life's challenges with courage, strength, and optimism. Abusiness failure, disappointments in love, a serious disability, money woes—theseare just a few of the trials that we might be faced with over the courseof a lifetime. Being patient in these circumstances doesn't mean that we have tolike the curveballs that get hurled at us. But we recognize that they come withbeing alive and so we don't add the additional suffering of bitterness, revenge,or hopelessness to the mix. Rather than whining or complaining, we roll up oursleeves and tackle the task at hand.

Patience in the form of acceptance also allows us to have empathy for others,because we recognize that as human beings, we all have limitations. It gives usthe emotional resilience to respond with kindness, to feel compassion.

When you lovingly tend to an elderly parent who never thanks you, when youcalmly explain to a fussy two-year-old for the forty-seventh time why he can'tclimb on the furniture, you are demonstrating patience, putting up withsituations that given your preference you'd rather not, because you understandthey are created by people who are, like you, flawed human beings who just wantto be happy.

Through this acceptance of others as they are, and of life as it is showing upright now, we prove our true strength and beauty as human beings. It's easy tobe accepting when all is well. But when we are patient when things aren't goingthe way we want, we truly shine as heroes.

Take a moment to reflect on a time when you employed the power of patience. Whatwere the circumstances? Did you calm an otherwise volatile situation? Treatsomeone you care about better than if you had blown your stack? How did it feel?What helped you to act patiently? What happened as a result?

Now think about a time when someone was patient with you. How did he or shetreat you? How did it feel? What were you able to do or learn as a consequence?

It is because patience is so valuable that all religions offer us models tofollow. Buddhists are taught that practicing the patience of the Buddha is oneof the ways to reach enlightenment, while patience is one of the ninety-ninedivine attributes of God in the Koran. In the Old Testament, Job is the epitomeof patience, while Christians are inspired by the life and sacrifice of JesusChrist.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from THE POWER OF Patience by M. J. RYAN. Copyright © 2013 M. J. Ryan. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Conari Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1573245992
• ISBN 13: 9781573245999
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224