The Power of Patience

In this podcast we explore how patience is a key ingredient of happiness. We will also look at steps to develop our patience. (Please note, this is lecture, not a guided meditation.)

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

I don't know if this happened to you or is happening to you,

But when I was a kid,

I was told over and over again that I should pray for patience.

It would make me a better person.

Now,

Mind you,

I've always been an observant person,

And I could tell that a lot of the people giving me this advice,

Even the adults,

Weren't very patient themselves.

But the other thing I was told that if you pray for patience,

You're going to have a lot of trials and tribulations because that's the way God teaches us to be patient.

So I did it.

I prayed to God for patience.

Now,

I have to admit,

I don't know if there's a direct correlation that God's going to basically give us trials and tribulations if we pray for patience,

But I did notice that in life,

There are a lot of things that require patience,

And life went a lot better when I developed that skill,

That habit of being patient.

Now,

We may never really know for sure if the prayers that we do make any difference until the day we die.

I believe they do,

But the other thing I believe is that when we do focus on something,

That that gives it energy,

And we start conditioning ourselves to do that which we're focused on.

So my hope is at the end of this podcast,

You'll be willing to either pray for,

Or at least work towards being more patient.

I think you'll see a lot of wisdom,

Power,

And benefit in being patient.

But why does patience matter?

Well,

If you're like me,

You probably live with other people,

And you have things you want to get done,

Unless you're perhaps living on a desert island or up in the woods,

But then you're probably not listening to this podcast very much either.

But if you are engaging with the world,

We have what we would call expectations.

We like to get things done,

And we're hopeful they're going to go a certain way.

But that isn't how life always works.

Life says,

You want to go right?

Guess what?

You're going left today.

Now,

Why we defy patience and just don't go left when we want to go right is that sometimes when we start pushing back the other way,

We get a result.

It may have a lot of negativity to it,

But sometimes we actually get a result.

For example,

Prior to 9-11 here in the States,

If you were flying and you were perhaps running behind to catch your plane,

You could rush through all the lines,

Push your way through,

Get to the terminal,

They may even have that door closed.

And with a lot of coercion,

Sometimes you could get them to open up that door.

You could be so rude,

They might even open it.

But as we know today,

That doesn't happen anymore.

That rudeness won't do us any good,

But it does,

Unfortunately,

Sometimes work.

So we use it.

And it's not always rude,

Either.

I mean,

Sometimes we're just persuasive.

We just say,

Well,

I know you're supposed to be close right now,

But is there any way I can come over for a few minutes?

I promise I'll be fast.

And that's polite.

They may say no,

But sometimes we push and we push and life says,

Again,

Go this way and we want to go that way.

Sometimes the door is open.

But the problem with that is it's a lot of fighting.

It's exhausting.

And you know,

It just makes life not much fun because you're fighting everywhere you go.

I mean,

If you do this on the extreme,

You're just kind of constantly arguing with people and the world because things aren't going the way you planned.

We create plans.

They don't work out the way we plan and we fight.

And that's exhausting.

So we get tired,

We get sick,

We get illnesses,

Or we're just a miserable human being.

And we're listening to this podcast because we don't want to be like that.

We want to be happy.

We want to be peaceful.

We want to like life.

And here's where patience can be so powerful in our lives.

Because we are going to set goals in life,

We're going to have expectations and sometimes we're going to work out and it's good to have goals and expectations.

But sometimes,

As I said,

Life says no,

Not today.

That's not happening today or something comes along that really throws a wrench into our lives.

And we say,

Oh,

Didn't see didn't see that one coming.

So what patience does is patience allows us to pause and say,

Okay,

What are my options here?

What can I do?

And sometimes often the answer will be nothing.

There's nothing you can do.

All you can do is adjust to the change.

And patience allows for that because patience says,

You know,

This isn't what I expected.

This has really changed what I thought was going to happen.

But instead of being upset,

Instead of fighting this,

I'm going to choose to adjust because I don't see any other options.

Now,

If there are,

Then we can take them.

But if there aren't,

It is so much better just to breathe deeply and say,

Okay,

How do I make this work?

How do I flow with life?

Because when we're not patient,

Often the only person that suffers is ourselves,

Everyone else.

They may not care.

They may not be involved.

They may not have anything to do with them.

The person that's going to suffer is us.

So patience takes away our suffering.

That's the big power of patience.

But the other thing sometimes happens too,

Our impatience causes other people to suffer.

And if you've been listening to this podcast for a while,

The quickest way to be unhappy is to be unkind towards others.

Kindness is an essential ingredient of happiness,

Of finding a good life.

When we're unkind towards others,

Then we're going to go down a path of unhappiness.

So what patience does is patience allows us to not lash out at people,

To hurt people.

We often,

Often know people that when they're angry,

When they're impatient,

They lash out and a lot of damage is done.

And sometimes that damage can cause other people a lot of pain.

And if we go through life hurting others,

We are not going to be happy,

Period.

Cruel,

Mean,

Unkind people are never happy.

They're just not.

So that's not a path we should go down.

The way to avoid being unkind is through patience.

The way to be patient is to adjust.

Life isn't going to go down the path we always wanted to.

We say,

Okay,

That isn't what I expected.

I'm going to make this work.

And that's the beauty of patience.

It's a great adaptability to change,

To things when they go differently than we thought they were going to go or that we expected them to go.

Let me use an example of how patience can really help life go better.

In a couple of weeks,

I'm headed with my kids to the Hawaii islands for vacation.

And guess what?

I'm going to the big island.

I've never been there before.

And I'm excited.

We have a place we're seeing it.

We have a car we're renting and we're going to go explore.

Well,

Also at the time of this recording,

The big island,

The one I'm going to is exploding.

The volcano is incredibly active right now.

And part of the island is shut down.

I bought my tickets and everything quite a while ago.

So I can't guarantee I'm going to be in the big island in a couple of weeks.

And I didn't even buy insurance.

So I don't even know if I can't go.

I'll get my money back.

There are a lot of things that are quite uncertain right now.

And that's okay.

I realize that that happens.

Life does that.

It doesn't happen very often,

But it can.

And we'll make other adjustments.

We'll go somewhere else for vacation if we have to.

I'm hoping we can still go there,

But we'll just have to see.

I mean,

I'm curious what's going to happen.

I'm hopeful that we'll be able to go,

But I don't know.

And we are good adjusters.

We'll adjust to the changes if we need to.

And that's where patience works so well.

When life doesn't go the way we want it to,

We just adjust because life just doesn't.

It's not how this game of life works.

Sometimes life can be incredibly obliging and just gracious.

And other times it's like,

Wow,

Didn't see that one coming.

You may be thinking,

Well,

Dr.

Puff,

I get it.

You can't control volcanoes.

That's more in God's hand or nature's hands.

But what about when there's a really rude person who's making my day miserable?

Am I supposed to be patient then?

Well,

Let's say the company I bought my ticket through ended up being a not very ethical company.

And I get to the airport and everything about my tickets,

My reservations are fake.

Or they went out of business or the owner of the company ran away to somewhere.

Well,

I can of course get very upset.

I can.

Really,

I could.

Or I could say,

Didn't see that one coming.

So am I going to make this a miserable thing that happens?

Or am I going to adjust?

It is a choice.

They ran away with my money.

I'm not going to get that back.

So what am I going to do?

Maybe I'll hire a lawyer and try to get it back.

I don't know.

But mostly I'm going to enjoy my life each day at a time.

Realizing that no matter how great my plans are,

No matter how thorough I am,

I'm coming up with expectations and they are thorough.

I thought of everything on the planet that could go wrong.

Guess what?

There are more things that can go wrong than we can ever think of.

So think of patience like having a really big soft pillow we take with us so that when things go wrong,

Instead of crashing and burning,

We just fall into the pillow and we don't get so upset and our lives aren't horrible.

Instead we say,

Hmm,

Okay,

Time to get up.

I fell down.

This big pillow kept me safe.

This pillow called patience.

I'm going to get up and adjust.

I talk about this a lot in the happiness podcast because it's a key ingredient to happiness.

Life will not always go the way we expect.

Patience is that ingredient that helps us adjust well.

So in conclusion,

How do we develop patience?

Well,

One way is I still think it's a good way is just pray for patience.

Start with that.

Most of us,

Not all,

But most of us have some faith in God and I think God's a really great being.

So I think that's the key to happiness.

Great being.

So pray to God for patience.

I think that's a great start,

But there are other ways.

I think we can implement patience in our life.

What we have to do is think of patience as a learned skill.

So if we aren't very patient and we want to learn something different,

Like be calm,

Patient,

We have to be patient with ourselves or probably more concretely kind with ourselves.

So again,

Let's say we get second traffic and we get very impatient and we realize,

Oh,

I'm being impatient again.

Darn it.

Well,

That's what kindness kicks in.

Say,

Okay,

I get it.

I'm trying to change this behavior.

So I do need to be kind to myself first.

I'm going to keep working on this,

Take a deep breath and keep working on being patient.

And then the great thing about life is if we are motivated and desire to become more patient,

Life's going to give us tons of opportunity to practice this.

It's awesome.

So each and every time you feel that impatience rising up,

Take a deep breath and pause.

Okay.

I can react right now.

I could pause.

I mean,

Really just pause,

Be still and say,

What are my options?

The first option is to say,

I can adjust to this if I need to.

I may not need to,

But if I need to,

I'm willing to adjust to anything because I want to be happy and happy people are really good at adjusting to changes.

So,

Because I want to be happy,

If this requires me to adjust,

I'm willing to do that.

Now I will consider my options and say,

Maybe I don't have to,

Maybe there's another way around this.

And we look for those.

But when we discover that there isn't,

Then we take that deeper breath and say,

Okay,

Now I have a new path I'm on.

Let's make this work.

And that's really the key of patience,

Pausing,

Looking at the situation,

Seeing that there's a way around it that we can do kindly.

You know,

I really believe in kindness.

And if there isn't,

Then we say,

Okay,

Then I guess this is what life gave me right now.

I'm going to make this work tomorrow.

Maybe a new day.

It will be a new day.

Who knows what they will bring.

I'll keep creating plans.

But when my plans don't work out,

I just adjust because I want to be happy.

I want to go through life with a smile on my face each and every day.

And the way we do that is that whatever life throws us,

We just say,

I'm going to make this work.

If we do choose to work on our patience,

Probably the hardest part's going to be being patient with ourselves.

When we're impatient,

We're going to be impatient with ourselves or unkind towards ourselves or be self-critical.

And that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So what's important is when we mess up,

We take that deep breath and say,

Okay,

I'll learn from this next time.

And we can keep learning to the day we die.

We will.

And we will get better at this with time.

But the longer we've been living life with impatience,

The harder it's going to be.

So we need to be patient with ourselves as we become more patient.

Hope I'm not being too redundant here.

But the point is patience benefits us.

It benefits other people.

It's just good.

So let's practice being more patient.

I believe the wisdom that I was given as a child was good wisdom.

And I'm very thankful that I worked towards being more patient.

It truly makes my life so much more enjoyable.

I remember being impatient and I remember being suffering from that a great deal.

It's so much better in life to be patient.

So let's cultivate the skill of patience.

Let's see the power of it.

Let's work towards it.

And I believe,

Deeply believe that any of us can become more patient,

No matter who we are or what we've done or however impatient we are.

We can call it the big change.

It may come slowly,

But I believe we're here to grow.

And we grow through patience,

Through developing patience.

So if we develop it,

We will reap the rewards and the power of patience.

Thank you for joining me on the happiness podcast.

If you are finding these episodes helpful,

I would love for you to share your experience with others.

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Org.

That's happinesspodcast.

Org.

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The reviews are an awesome way to encourage people to start listening to the happiness podcast.

And until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.

Reviews

Been enjoying your podcasts lately. Sage advice. Thank you 🙏🏻💝✌️🕊️

Love this

Thank you

Wonderful! I have working on patience and it is a life changer! I realized as my patience grows my understanding for others grows simultaneously!
Merci! I am a happy person!

Loved how the concept of patience was communicated through this talk! I will definitely use some of the tips and strategies for putting patience into practice.

Great reflections. From now on, i wil carry my patience pillow aling with me. 🙏

Thank you for another wonderful podcast, Dr. Puff 🙏🏻 praying for patience

Very good, beautiful calming voice with great wisdom 🙏

Wonderful, calming forgiving tone & wisdom through beautiful words.
Thank you.

Great explanations and visualizations. I was laughing at the travel pillow. Thanks!

Thank you! Beautiful podcast

Lovely, thank you 💜

Great podcast happiness and patience

Really good introduction to patience. I liked the practical tips at the end.

This was really helpful to me, and made me smile. Thank you!

Thank you, very helpful to me

Thank you for that. I really needed it today. Wonderful wisdom as always. I hope you made it to Hawaii and had a wonderful family vacation!

Very good episode, full of good ideas to further develop patience. Overall great pod cast. Thanks for sharing.

True words. Helpful. Thank you.

Excellent insight as always. Very thought provoking and positive. Thank you 💜x