And How do You Deal with It?
How often do you feel impatient? And when you do, do you accept it as a given? Isn't it natural to feel impatient while waiting in a long line, being stuck behind a slow driver, navigating a lengthy menu on the phone, or waiting for someone who is late? Yes, it is natural. Why?
From infancy onward, we react to perceptions of threats with aggression. If a baby is offered a spoonful of food she doesn't like, she perceives this as a threat and reacts with aggression: by batting the spoon away. Aggression becomes locked in as a response to a threat. As we grow and develop, we perceive many threats and react to them with various forms of aggression, ranging from outright anger to mild irritation, passive-aggressive responses and, yes, impatience.
How is Impatience a Manifestation of Aggression?
The cause of our impatience, e.g. a long line in the grocery store, is perceived as a threat because it prevents us from doing what we want to do: pay and leave. Similarly, the slow driver ahead of us, the ridiculous telephone menu, or the person who is late all represent threats because they all prevent us from doing what we want to do. How can we respond to these threats? We are imprisoned in our situation. All we can do (short of cutting in line, honking, slamming the phone down or leaving the site of the meeting) is to imagine an aggressive response. In the long line, we think "Hurry up," and similarly we fantasy aggressive responses in other situations.
Impatience Adds to Our Stress Level
Feeling impatient is stressful in and of itself, but the effects of that impatience can create major problems that add greatly to one's stress. It can strain relationships, cause hasty decisions that result in poor choices, and even, due to the stress, cause health problems.
Are There Ways of Lessening Impatience?
Various sources advocate a number of methods to lessen impatience: recognizing triggers, taking deep breaths, setting realistic expectations for what you can accomplish in a given time period, practicing acceptance of the situation, reframing the situation as an opportunity to relax or to see humor in the situation, distracting yourself, and practicing gratitude.
However, these methods struggle against the habit of responding to aggression with your own aggression (however muted and ineffectual it may be), because it has been locked in from an early age.
Your Inner Guide Can Do it for You
What is needed is for the locked-in habit pattern to be unlocked so that you can more effectively use the various strategies suggested above. Your Inner Guide can do that for you. But more than that, without any effort on your part, it will gradually alleviate feelings of impatience, just as it does for other uncomfortable emotions such as anxiety, depression, guilt and shame. If you don't yet have an Inner Guide, you can acquire one, for free, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ4G9VIxS94
