Patience: Emotional Strength in an Impatient World

Today’s episode is on something I have been trying to work on for years, and honestly, I still struggle with it every day. 

And that is the art of “Patience”.

And I am not even going to pretend I have mastered this art because I absolutely. have. not.

In fact, I am the most impatient person  I have ever met…and I am not joking.

I have been struggling with patience for as long as I can remember.

And yet somehow.. there is still not a day that goes by where I am not battling impatience in some area of my life.

And the ironic part is.. Life has tried to teach me patience so many times, and in so many ways, but apparently I am a very slow learner when it comes to this lesson.

What I have realized though, is that impatience does not just create  frustration, it creates stress, It affects relationships. It affects our mental state. It affects how we treat other people. And honestly, how we treat ourselves.

And the older I get, I know that impatience has caused me far more damage than patience ever would have.

I will tell you that  the most important lesson I have learned to date, is that..

patience is not just about waiting.

It’s about how we behave while we wait.

 I think it’s important to define patience.

Patience: Is the ability to accept or tolerate delay, difficultly, inconvenience, or discomfort, without becoming anxious or irritable.

It involves remaining calm and composed while waiting  for a desired outcome, enduring hardship, or dealing with challenging people or situations.

Sounds simple. That is, until life starts testing it. Patients isn’t really tested when things are going our way.

Patience is not just a personality trait, it is a mix of biology, psychology, life experience and environment  all working together.

For a face paced mind, waiting doesn’t feel neutral, its feels uncomfortable. Almost like something is wrong that needs to be fixed. 

When someone is living in a state of chronic stress, anxiety or overwhelm the nervous system is already under a lot of pressure, and in that state, even the smallest delays  or inconveniences feel amplified.

A calm nervous system naturally has more space to tolerate waiting.

And Another major factor is ‘learned behavior”

We inherit emotional responses from our environment growing up. If you were raised in a fast paced, reactive, or high pressure environment, impatience can become a default response, we learn that urgency equals control. That speed equals safety. And that waiting equals discomfort.

And overtime , that becomes automatic.

Our brains are built around dopamine, the chemical involved in motivation and reward. When we repeatedly experience instant rewards our brain starts to expect instant outcomes. Overtime, delayed gratification feels more uncomfortable, not because we are weak, but because the brain has been trained toward instant satisfaction.

And finally, Life Experience plays a huge role in patience.

Some people develop patience through repetition- through our fitness, parenting, long term goals , healing, or situations where  we  learn that rushing doesn’t help.

They may not have had as many experiences that have required long term waiting or emotional endurance.

So when you combine all of this together;  temperament, stress levels, learned behaviors, brain conditioning, and life experience, you start to see why patients varies so much from person to person.

NOT TO WORRY-Patience isn’t fixed. Even if someone is naturally more reactive  or fast paced, patience can still be strengthened overtime, Not perfectly. And by no means overnight. But gradually, through awareness, lifestyle changes and practice.

Now, Patience is influenced by biology, environment, and stress and life experience.

Impatience  comes from wanting certainty, movement, results and answers.

When things feel unclear, delayed or out of our control, our minds naturally want resolution. It wants things to move forward. It wants closure. It wants speed. And our brain wants certaintyinstead of waiting in uncertainty.

This is where impatience starts to build.

But environment matters here  too.

We now live in a time where almost everything is “instant satisfaction”.

*instant entertainment

*Instant communication

*instant shopping

And 

*instant answers

We barely have to wait for anything anymore.

Even patient people are loving instant satisfaction.

And overtime , I think that changes us psychologically. It lowers our tolerance for waiting, for effort, for uncertainty and even for boredom.

The things that matter most, like  relationships, health, career growth, healing and trust, they all require time, repetition, and emotional endurance.

Everything that once required patience, connection, effort, and emotional presence are now competing against instant forms of stimulation… even areas like intimacy and relationships, there are now forms of stimulation that offer immediate reward without the same emotional depth, connection, communication or patients that real human intimacy requires..

One huge example of this is pornography.

 From a psychological perspective, pornography offers immediate reward with very little patience required.

“Real intimacy is slooooower, and it requires all the things:

But having instant stimulation(in this case) trains the brain differently.

And honestly, I don’t think this only applies to porn- I think applies to modern life in general.

We are constantly overstimulated and conditioned to expect speed.

So when real life moves slower than technology does.. frustration shows itself.

And when that happens across so many parts of your life , patience naturally becomes harder to sustain. Our brains are slowly losing tolerance for delayed results.

Now that we are constantly surrounded by environments that encourage urgency, instant gratification, instant satisfaction, and emotional reactivity. I honestly think impatience is becoming a habit  for a lot of people, and they just assume it’s part of their personality.

I do believe  that impatience can absolutely become habitual, because again, our brain learns thru repetition.

*The more we rush

*The more we react emotionally

*The more we expect immediate movement, answers and results.

The more our brain begins treating urgency as normal.

Eventually impatience stops being an occasional reaction  and becomes an automatic response.

You stop tolerating discomfort..

You stop allowing things to unfold naturally.

Instead, everything starts feeling like it needs to happen NOW.

And overtime, impatience slowly shapes  the way we move through life.

We get everywhere faster

*We get angry faster

*Frustrated faster

And we get Judgmental & lose empathy  faster.. because now our nervous system is conditioned  to constant urgency. And the hard part is that life reinforces this habit constantly.

We don’t really practice waiting anymore so we are losing our tolerance for slowness, which actually makes impatience dangerous as a habit- because now it feels normal. 

I have noticed how impatience has woven itself into our everyday life- not just in me, but everywhere around me .

People interrupt constantly

They react before thinking

 We seem to be practicing  reactivity and not patience, and remember ; whatever we practice we strengthen.

The good news is that if impatience can become a habit, patience can too.

Impatience is stressful.

Not just emotionally but physically too.

Patience may be one of the hardest emotional skills to develop in this life.

Our world is constantly pushing speed, urgency, instant gratification, and overstimulation. And overtime, that pressure affects our minds, our nervous systems, our relationships and our overall wellbeing.

We are all becoming less tolerant of waiting, discomfort, uncertainty, inconvenience, and slowness- and  This is  exactly why patience  matters more than ever.

We need to fight for patience again- it’s worth it.

*Maybe we need to slow down a little.

*Take better care of our bodies

*Reduce your constant overstimulation

* sleep better

* practice emotional restraint

* allow people to move differently than we do.

* and we need to learn to tolerate inconvenience without immediately reacting.

And maybe, most importantly, remembering that not everything meaningful in life is supposed to happen instantly.

In many ways , patience may actually be one of the strongest forms of emotionally control left in a world that is constantly trying to speed us up. And while it may never be mastered, it can absolutely be practiced, one reaction at a time.

And remember… patience is not weakness.

-And Impatience does far more damages to us than the waiting itself.

Enjoy!

Joanne Demers

The Aging Mask- A Lifestyle Medicine Podcast

(949)236-1529

Follow along on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/theagingmask

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, welcome back to the Aging Mouse Podcast, a lifestyle medicine podcast that explores lifestyle, wellness, and our everyday choices that shape the way we age. I am Joanne de Murs. Thank you for listening today. I greatly appreciate it. Today's episode is on something that I have been trying to work on for years. I struggle with it every day. And that is the art of patience. Patience. And I'm not even going to pretend that I have mastered this art because I have absolutely not. In fact, I am the most impatient person that I have ever met. And I am not joking when I say that. I wish I was, but I am not laughing. I'm not laughing. It's not good. I have been struggling with patience for as long as I can remember. I have prayed incessantly for patience. I have meditated asking for patience. I've even made birthday wishes asking for more patience. And yet, somehow, there is still not a day that goes by where I am not battling impatience in some area of my life. I am crazy. I am impatient with long lines, slow drivers, slow moving people, people who don't do the right thing. And I did even use I used to get super impatient when my career goals didn't happen fast enough. You would think I'm 20 by what I just said, right? The most ironic part is that life has tried to teach me patience so many times, so many times and in so many ways, but apparently I'm a very slow learner when it comes to this lesson. But what I've realized is that impatience does not just create frustration, it creates stress and it affects relationships, it affects our mental state, and it affects how we treat other people. And honestly, and most importantly, how we treat ourselves, to be honest. And the older that I get, I know that impatience has caused me far more damage than having patience ever would have. Now, I'll tell you the most important lesson that I've learned to date, and that is that patience is not just about waiting. It's about how we behave while we wait. Patience is not just about waiting, it's about how we behave while we wait. Now I think it's important for me to define patience for you, so please allow me the honor. Patience is the ability to accept or tolerate delay, difficulty, inconvenience, or discomfort without becoming anxious or irritable. Good luck. It involves remaining calm and composed while waiting for a desired outcome or enduring hardships or dealing with challenging people or situations. It sounds simple, that is, until life starts testing it. And patience isn't really tested when things are going our way. And I have found that patience itself has been broken down into a few key qualities that help explain what it really involves. And it's been very helpful. The first is endurance. Now remember, these are key qualities that um patience has. Endurance, the ability to withstand difficult situations by bearing pain or adversity without complaint. Endurance. The second one is perseverance, the ability to move forward and continue a task despite obstacles or slow progress. Then we have tolerance, and tolerance is accepting others' faults or differences without frustration, discomfort, or overreacting. I'm zero for four, for three. And then we have equanimity, which is the ability to maintain emotional calm in the face of stress, uncertainty, or waiting when life is not moving at your speed. So you have endurance, perseverance, tolerance, and equanimity. Isn't it crazy to think that there are people out there among us who are all of these things and who are naturally calm and patient? While there's some of us that are on the struggle bus every day. Why do some people seem naturally calm, measured, and patient while some of us feel internally stressed the moment things slow down? The bummer is that there's not one simple answer to that. Patience is not just a personality trait, it's a mix of biology, psychology, and life experience and environment all working together. Some of it is temperament. From a really young age, people seem to differ in their natural nervous system sensitivity. Some people, again, are naturally calm, and some people are more fast processing, high energy, and internally urgent all the time. Neither one of those is better or worse, but they do experience time and delay differently. For a fast-paced mind, waiting doesn't feel, it doesn't feel neutral. It feels very, very uncomfortable. Almost like something is wrong that needs to be fixed. That's what it feels like for a fast-paced mind. Some of it is stress and emotional regulation. When someone is living in a state of chronic stress, anxiety, or overwhelm, the nervous system is already under a lot of pressure. And in that state, even the smallest delays or inconveniences feel tenfold. They feel amplified. Impatience becomes harder not because we are impatient per se, but because our internal system is already overloaded. A calm nervous system naturally has more space to tolerate waiting. And some is another um, another major factor is uh learned behavior. Learned behavior. We inherit emotional responses from our environment growing up. And if you were raised in a fast-paced, reactive or high-pressure environment, impatience can become a default response. We learn that urgency equals control, that speed equals safety, and that waiting equals discomfort. And over time that becomes automatic. And there is also the role of reward and conditioning. Our brains are built around dopamine and the chemical involved in motivation and reward. When we repeatedly experience instant rewards, instant gratification, our brain starts to expect instant outcomes. And over time, delayed gratification feels more uncomfortable, more and more uncomfortable. Not because we're weak, but because the brain has been trained toward instant satisfaction. Then we have life experience. Life experience plays a huge role in patience. Some people develop patience through repetition, through fitness, through parenting, long-term goals, through healing, or situations where we have learned that rushing does not help. And they also may not have had as many experiences that have required long-term waiting or emotional endurance. So when you combine all of this together: temperament, stress levels, learned behaviors, brain conditioning, and life experience, you start to see why patience varies so much from person to person. And not to worry, patience isn't fixed. Even if someone is naturally more reactive or fast-paced, patience can still be strengthened over time, not perfectly and by no means, by no means overnight, but gradually through awareness, lifestyle changes, and practice. Now, patience is influenced by biology, environment, and stress and life experience. Impatience comes from wanting certainty, movement, results, and answers. When things feel unclear, delayed, or out of our control, our minds naturally want resolution. It wants things to move forward. It wants closure. It wants speed. And our brain wants certainty instead of waiting in uncertainty. And this is where impatience starts to build. Environment matters here too, though. We now live in a time where almost everything is instant satisfaction, instant gratification. We have instant entertainment, instant communication, instant shopping, and instant answers. We barely have to wait for anything anymore. Even patient people are loving instant satisfaction instant satisfaction and instant gratification. And over time, I think that changes us psychologically because it lowers our tolerance for waiting, for effort, for uncertainty, and even for boredom. The things that matter most, relationships, health, career growth, healing, and trust, they all require time, repetition, and emotional endurance. Everything that once required patience, connection, effort, and emotional presence, they are now competing against instant forms of stimulation. Even areas like intimacy and relationships. There are now forms of stimulation that offer immediate reward without the same emotional depth, connection, communication, or patience that real human intimacy requires. And one huge example of this is pornography. And I'm not, I am not judging. You do you, but from a psychological perspective, pornography offers immediate reward with very little patience required. Real intimacy is very slow, it's slower, and it requires all the things. I think it applies to modern life in general, because we are constantly overstimulated and conditioned to expect speed. So when real life moves slower than technology does, frustration starts to show itself. And when that happens across so many parts of your life, patience naturally becomes harder to sustain. Our brains are slowly losing tolerance for delayed results. And I think that's a huge reason that patience is becoming really hard to master, not just individually, but collectively. Now that we are constantly surrounded by environments that encourage urgency, again, instant gratification, instant satisfaction, and emotional reactivity, I honestly think that impatience is becoming a habit for a lot of people. And they just assume it's part of their personality. And I do, I honestly believe that impatience can absolutely become habitual. Because again, our brain learns through repetition. The more we rush, the more we react emotionally, the more we expect immediate movement, answers, and results, the more our brain begins treating urgency as normal. Eventually, impatience stops being an occasional reaction and becomes an automatic response. You stop tolerating discomfort. You stop allowing things to unfold naturally. Instead of everything, instead, everything starts feeling like it needs to happen now, right this minute. And over time, impatience slowly shapes the way that we move through life. We get everywhere faster, we get angry faster, we get frustrated faster, and we get judgmental and we lose empathy faster because now our nervous system is conditioned to constant urgency. And the hard part is that life reinforces this habit constantly. We don't really practice waiting anymore, so we are losing our tolerance for slowness, which actually makes impatience dangerous, really, as a habit, because now it feels normal. And I've noticed how impatience has woven itself into our everyday life, and not just in me, but everywhere around me. People interrupt constantly, they react before thinking. We seem to be practicing reactivity and not patience. And remember, whatever we practice, we strengthen. The good news is that if impatience can become a habit, patience can too. That is the good news. If impatience can become a habit, patience can too. And you know that if we continue living with a really low patience tolerance, your nervous system is going to live in a constant state of tension. Impatience is stressful, not just emotionally, but physically too. I think so many, so many of us underestimate how much impatience can damage us. It's not just emotional reaction, our body responds to it constantly. When we become impatient, our nervous system shifts into a heightened state. Our heart rate increases, our stress hormones increase, muscle tension increases, and our breathing becomes really shallow. Our bodies begin reacting as though something is wrong, even if the threat is simply traffic, a delay, uncertainty, or an inconvenience. It responds to that threat. And when this happens repeatedly throughout the day, over months and years, your body's gonna stay under that ongoing stress. And this constant internal tension will contribute to anxiety, irritability, emotional exhaustion, horrible sleep, mental burnout, and elevated stress levels and nervous system fatigue. And you probably don't realize how much energy that you burn by fighting patience all day long. Creates a lot of tension inside our body. And it's so hard to be in a calm, relaxed stress or state, excuse me, when we're fighting patience. And I think that impatience steals our peace because instead of being present, our minds are constantly focused on what should be happening faster, differently, or more efficiently. And this can't help but to create a lifestyle where your nervous system rarely gets a chance to fully relax, which is probably why so many people today feel mentally overstimulated, emotionally reactive, and physically exhausted, not only from what they are doing, but from the pace at which they are trying to emotionally force their life to move. And honestly, there are so many days when my impatience drains more energy from me than the actual situation itself. And the waiting is not always the problem, it's my reaction to the waiting that is the problem, and that, as you know, is not healthy, and maybe this is why I find it so interesting that the one place in my life where I genuinely do practice the art of patience is in fitness. The one area in my life where I do have patience and I have always had patience is with my health and my fitness. And I've spent a lot of time asking myself, why here? Why in the fitness space? Why in the health and fitness space? When here in this space is where most people struggle. I don't have a problem with patience in this area, and it perplexes me every day. Why can I accept the slow progress in fitness, but I struggle accepting slowness in other areas? And I think the answer is because fitness has forced me to understand something. I it's forced me to understand something. That I have struggled accepting in almost every area of my life, and that is that results take time. You can't rush strength, you can't rush endurance, you can't rush body transformation, you can't rush recovery, and consistency matters more than speed in fitness. And for some reason, my brain fully accepts all of that when it comes to fitness. And honestly, it's become a great teacher of patience for me. Unlike a lot of areas in life that offer instant gratification, fitness rewards consistency, repetition, discipline, and delayed gratification. And fitness actually contains one of the greatest lessons about life. And that is that small actions repeated consistently over time creates results. Fitness teaches you to trust the processes that you cannot immediately see. And for some reason, I understand the process. I trust the process. With that being said, fitness has taught me the importance of consistency, delayed gratification, and trusting the process. And it's also made me start paying attention to what I put in my body. And the more I focus on health and wellness, the more I start realizing that patience is not only mental and emotional, it's physical. And I have discovered that nutrition directly affects all of our nervous system, not just mine. It affects our nervous system, our energy levels, our mood stability, our stress response, and our emotional regulation. And honestly, one of the biggest realizations for me personally was noticing how much alcohol and my candy eating, basically sugar, were was affecting my patient's levels. I think that's why I was so bad. I had zero patience. I was in the negative numbers on my patients level. And to be truthful with you, since I quit drinking alcohol and I quit eating my candy, my gummy bears, and I've cut out, well, I've haven't cut out yet, but I've cut back on soda and sugar. I genuinely feel a shift in my patient's level for the better. It's not just a little shift, it's a pretty big shift. And seriously, I I did not expect nutrition and lifestyle habits to affect my patient's level as much as they apparently do. And looking back now, my alcohol and excessive sugar were keeping my nervous system more anxious, reactive, and emotionally unsettled more than I realized. It all makes sense. It all makes sense. Your sugar highs and crashes, they make you feel jittery, restless, and irritable. And while alcohol may temporarily relax you in the moment, it does increase anxiety. It messes with our sleep and it affects our emotional regulation after we drink, right? So working on better nutrition, removing alcohol, reducing sugar, sleeping phenomenally better, and feeling more emotional emotionally balanced has made me noticeably less reactive. I still struggle with impatience, absolutely, but I no longer feel constantly internally rushed the way I used to. I can go hours feeling calm. Who would have thought? Who would have thought? I used to think that patience was something that you eventually grew up and arrived at. Like one day you wake up completely calm and peaceful and emotionally unbothered by slow people and long lines, but I no longer believe that. I think patience is something that we practice repeatedly and struggle with repeatedly because life never stops testing us. It never stops testing our patience because there will always be delays, uncertainty, slow people, and difficult people. But the end goal here is to become a little less reactive. That's the end goal, is to be a little less reactive. Be understanding. Patience is not about never being frustrated. It's about learning how to not let your frustration control your behavior. Maybe you will start realizing that traffic is not ruining your peace. It's your reaction to the traffic that is ruining your peace. Maybe the long line isn't the problem. Maybe it's your inability to tolerate inconvenience. That's the problem. The more I pay attention, the more I realize patience may not be a destination that we reach, but a lifelong practice of learning, practicing, and emotional restraint. I know patience may be one of the hardest emotional skills to develop in this life. Our world is constantly pushing speed, urgency, instant gratification, and overstimulation. And over time, that pressure affects our minds, our nervous systems, our relationships, and our overall well-being. And we are all becoming less tolerant of waiting. We're becoming less tolerant of discomfort, uncertainty, inconvenience, and slowness. And this is exactly why patience matters more than ever. We need to fight for patience again. It's worth it. Maybe we just need to slow down a little, take care of our bodies better, reduce the constant overstimulation. We need to sleep better. We need to practice emotional restraint. We need to allow people to move differently than we do. And we need to learn to tolerate inconvenience without immediately reacting. And maybe most importantly, remembering that not everything meaningful in life is supposed to happen instantly. You know, in many ways, patience may actually be one of the strongest forms of emotional control that we have left in a world that is constantly trying to speed us up. And while it may never be mastered, it can absolutely be practiced one reaction at a time. And remember this: patience is not weakness. And impatience does far more damage to us more than waiting itself. Impatience does far more damage to us. We just need to wait. We just need to wait. That's all I have for today. Thanks for listening. Until next week, live in gratitude and go live your best day yet. Enjoy. If you enjoyed this episode and just can't wait to hear and learn more, don't forget to subscribe to the Aging Mask, a lifestyle medicine podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts. And I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. So please feed, feed, please leave a review on the Aging Mask Instagram. Or if you don't have socials or you're taking a break, feel free to text me at the Aging Mask 949-236-1529. We can talk about this episode or any of my prior episodes. Let's have a conversation. I am here and I'm ready to listen, and I would love to hear help where I can. All the best.