Being able to discern this requires mental clarity which requires emotional clarity. Emotional clarity comes from satisfied needs. Asking yourself to be patient when one of your needs is unsatisfied is downright self-abuse. Yet, we all do it because its exactly what we were taught growing up. And I have compassion for you as I understand that this has been the best way you found to protect yourself and keep you safe.
How is patience learned, grown, activated?
In my opinion, part of it can be a character trait one is born with, but a greater part stems from being brought up in an emotionally safe family environment where your parents never made you wait longer then you could take it. They gauged the waiting time relative to your needs and knew how much frustration you can tolerate without feeling hurt or traumatized.
What does that mean?
It means that your parent had to be in close emotional touch with you and aligned with your needs so that they either satisfied your needs instantly or provided adequate soothing when the need couldn’t be met right away.
Here is a great example from Quora:
“So — how parents, teachers, coaches, grandparents, neighbors and others teach the skill of waiting for something without becoming agitated with frustration is simply to:
Understand the physical signs before a child loses control from impatience. A kid will be jumping around and watching you cook. Dinner isn’t ready yet. S/he will have to wait.
Explain the value of waiting. “Raw chicken isn’t safe to eat. We have to wait for it to cook.”
Substitute X for Y. “Let’s snack on some cucumbers with a yummy yoghurt-dill dip while we wait for dinner to be ready.”
Distract. “Let’s read a book while we snack. What book will you choose now?
Spend even more time to increase patience. “Also pick one or two books for bedtime reading.
Your goal as a parent if you want to teach your child patience is to increasingly extend the period of time your child can wait without decompensating.”
Now, look at yourself – did you grow up in this kind of an environment with this type of an emotionally balanced parent who paid attention to your needs and soothed you when needed?
Chances are, probably not. Or not to the extent that you needed. The reason for this is not only your parents’ emotional capacity which could have been lacking, but also the cultural and societal paradigm your parents and their parents grew up with. Let’s be honest we as a species are quite emotionally illiterate. Emotions, psychology, and understanding of their effect on life, business, and general human expansion are just surfacing up.
Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, did his revolutionary work just over a hundred years ago. Humans have been on this planet almost 6000 years. So taking an objective look, human race is in emotional kindergarten now.
Understanding that can alleviate a lot of anger and pain you might personally have as to why your family didn’t provide that safe harbor where you could have learned and acquired patience among other qualities. And it can open-up curiosity as to the discovery of yourself, your emotional system and structure, and their direct effect on how you show up in the world – in your business, in your relationships, in your larger community.
The best way to get in touch with your emotional self and source your internal joy and brilliance is by healing your emotional pains. This entails pinpointing the actual emotions that are causing your business challenge today, because it is your unprocessed emotions that are the ones causing it, not any outside force such as market fluctuation. The fastest way to sustainably get over them, so they don’t keep popping back up, is to address and transform those emotional pains at their core. What lies behind is your joy and tremendous creative and business insight.