Strategies For Developing More Patience With People
We are encouraged to deal with people with patience and understanding because it puts our witness on display in a very tangible way. That can be hard! So it is a good idea to fill your toolbox with techniques for releasing the negative thoughts that you experience about other people.
Doing so will open room in your heart and mind for God’s comfort and support that is so desperately needed to demonstrate patience. Here are a few ideas to help release that negative energy and build your tolerance towards others.
Releasing
Here is a simple exercise you can use to help release the negative energy that happens when you get annoyed or impatient, providing room for more positive, empowering thoughts.
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Awareness. First, become aware of your feelings. What sensations and emotions are going on inside you? Are you uncomfortable, doubtful, upset, peeved, frustrated, or angry? Try to give voice to the actual feelings you are encountering.
Acceptance. Let the unwanted feeling rise to the surface of your awareness. Feel it completely – don’t push it back into your subconscious.
Be aware of the feeling and accept it. Tell yourself, just as if you were counseling a friend, that it’s okay to have that feeling.
Let Go. Finally, let go! Let go of the unwanted feelings and energy. Let them flow out of your body. Visualize the negative feelings leaving you by creating an image of that release.
For example, you may want to picture a teakettle letting off steam, or a water dam breaking and the water gushing over the edge.
I like to imagine a funny cartoon character exploding like in a Roadrunner cartoon. Use whatever will work for you to release completely the negative feelings you have.
Go through this exercise as many times as you need to fully release the negative emotions. You will probably find that each time you go through it, the negative feelings will lessen a little bit more.
If you practice the exercise whenever you feel tense and impatient, it will become easier to let go of the negative feelings quickly.
Eventually, you won’t even have to go through the steps consciously, and will instead jump right to your release visual.
Softening
Imagine you have a customer that just does not have it together. He is slow getting you the details you need to finish a task for him and the information he sends you is incomplete.
You end up spending a lot of your time looking for his errors and correcting his work. That takes you away from tasks for other customers that you had planned.
When you are talking to yourself and others, what words would you use to describe this client? If your descriptions are full of negatively charged words, you will create much stronger emotions than if you can soften the emotional impact of the words you choose.
At the same time, this is most definitely right about what we say to others.
We often forget that the words we speak to ourselves have a tremendous impact as well. Choosing kinder, gentler words throughout your day can help you develop the patience you need to deal with difficult people.
For example, read the following sentences and let yourself feel the emotions that arise when using the different words:
- It infuriates me that I have to redo his work every time.
- I get annoyed when I have to redo his work every time.
- She is so rigid it makes me angry!
- Her determination can be irritable at times.
- That moron got these figures wrong again.
- He sure can be distracted – he got these figures wrong again.
Do you notice how the first sentence stirs up negative emotions within you while the second softens them? People will be annoying – it is a fact of life.
But by using less emotionally charged words to describe your negative reactions to people, you are looking at the world through God’s eyes, not Satan’s, which will develop peace of mind and harmony.
That is a state that is much more helpful in building patience with people. Another trick I suggest when using this technique is to find a “softened” word that you think is amusing.
For example, when I feel myself becoming angry or upset, I use the word “peeved.” It’s such a silly word that I find myself smiling a little, and the negatively charged emotions that were stewing up inside me instantly calm.
Try to come up with words like that to soften emotions that you often feel. Here are a few possible suggestions for softened words:
I feel humiliated— I feel perturbed
I feel controlled — I feel hassled
I feel manipulated — I feel hoodwinked
I feel ignored — I feel tuned out
I feel punished – – – I feel scolded
You can come up with your set of replacement words that soften those negatively charged words that you find yourself using over and over again.
Become an Inverse Paranoid
One last technique is to practice what Jack Canfield likes to call “inverse paranoia.” For developing patience with other people, inverse paranoia means that instead of thinking that an annoying person is plotting to do you harm.
You should instead believe that they are planning to do you good. Or, at the very least, be aware that everyone is dealing with struggles, weaknesses, setbacks, and obstacles. It is not all about you.
Practicing inverse paranoia shifts the focus from “what’s in it for me” to a collaborative mentality that can benefit everyone involved. Imagine how much easier.
It would be if everyone went through life expecting other people to support them and build them up, rather than worried about how to save their skins.
And the good news is that when you start practicing inverse paranoia, people around you will change and practice it as well.
That is why Paul inspires the Thessalonians. What goes around, comes around!