welcome back to these overview videos of my newest book 10 weeks to love and abundance in
this video we're going to talk about patience and i'm your host and the author dr dawn-elise snipes
why is patience important well we all know that patience is supposedly a virtue but why
patience helps us conserve energy that we often waste nurturing anger or impatience
think about when you get impatient about something like getting results back from the doctor
or getting a present or getting a package and and you start getting frustrated because it's not
happening fast enough that's your body dumping a whole bunch of energy by activating that hpa axis
for for what being impatient doesn't make it happen any faster generally
patience helps improve blood pressure and blood sugar regulation
because that hpa axis isn't always dumping cortisol when cortisol is dumped it causes
your body to dump blood sugar to give you energy to fight or flee so people are better
able to regulate their blood sugar even if they don't have diabetes or some other issue
it improves health due to lower oxidative stress and you know if you're not running hot all the
time if you're not you know putting the pedal to the metal as they say then you're not going to
produce as many free radicals which means there's less oxidative stress which means your body's
cleaning crew can keep up with getting rid of the free radicals before they start to cause problems
when you're patient you tend to have fewer mistakes in everything you do because you're
taking your time you're not trying to rush through it and get it done as quickly as possible
patience also helps you spread your energy around to all of the things that are important to you
instead of using a bunch of energy getting angry at somebody because they didn't do something the
way you wanted getting angry at yourself because you made a mistake getting angry
because your package from amazon hasn't arrived you're using that energy you're saying no i'm
not going to waste my energy on getting angry over things i have no control over right now
i am going to use that energy to either fix a mistake i made or focus on things that
are important in my rich and meaningful life in my life of love and abundance
when we're patient we tend to have improved concentration
irritability anger triggers the hpa axis trigger triggers adrenaline and another chemical called
glutamate those chemicals impair our ability to concentrate and see the big picture they cause
us to have tunnel vision so we tend to make poorer judgments and tend to not be able to
concentrate our body is focused on fleeing the threat not concentrating on writing the report
or whatever you're supposed to be doing improved relationships are also a consequence of patience
because you have more energy and improved focus attention and less irritability with other people
you can actually pay attention to what they're saying and you're able when
you're more patient oftentimes you're able to tolerate different perspectives more easily
patience also helps you improve your self-esteem because you focus on your progress not perfection
you recognize that okay maybe you want to get in shape or lose weight it's not
going to happen overnight when you're patient you see your small progress you see that you
can walk a little bit faster this week or you see that you've lost a quarter pound this week
and you celebrate those successes instead of being angry that you didn't make a bigger goal
when you're patient you have improved self-confidence because by taking your time
you often do things right and make fewer mistakes
when you're patient you have reduced emotional turmoil when others don't behave the way you
want them to and i remember when my kids were little pushing the buggy through the store
repeating to myself over and over god grant me patience yeah getting angry at them
probably wasn't going to solve the problem they were bored they were hungry they were over
tired whatever it was that was causing them to act out and i mean thankfully they weren't acting out
horribly but they were trying my patience and it was important for me to recognize that okay
getting super angry is probably not the best way to handle this situation being patient with them
recognizing what's going on and then addressing it in a calm assertive manner is generally better
patience will help you have improved relationships because you're less critical and more supportive
and empathetic of other people even if they don't do it the way you want to if they do it and get it
done and get it done right then okay you know my daughter and i have very different ways of doing
things my son and i have very different ways of doing things but we all can get those things done
we just go about it a different way and instead of being critical and insisting they do it my
way you know it's a lot more effective to empower them to find their own way
and finally patience enhances your compassion when you're able to step back and view situations from
other people's perspectives or compassion for yourself if you're able to step back and view
a situation that happened in the past from the perspective of yourself at that point in time you
know what was going through your head this this afternoon when you got angry what was going on
as they say hindsight is 20 20. so sometimes when you retrospectively look at things you can
have more compassion with yourself learn from the situation so you don't make the same mistake again
as i mentioned in the intro each chapter starts out explaining kind of what the topic is and why
it's important and then there's a self-assessment and the self-assessments are generally relatively
brief but they help you kind of get a feel for where you're at with that particular
trait patience means tolerating delays and enduring provocation without responding with
anger anger triggers your stress response system or that hpa axis causes the release
of cortisol that stress hormone and triggers you to get in that fight or flea mentality
so think of three examples when you've had to wait for something and we're anxious and impatient
in each of those situations did anxiety and impatience make them happen any sooner
or did it just burn up a lot of your energy and distract you from being able to use those moments
to notice the things that were wonderful in your life that you did have
identify three examples of when something was hard and you wanted to give up because you
couldn't get it right immediately calculus for me did impatience make it any easier to get through
did it help you get through it any faster a lot of times the answer is no
and for both of those situations how did anxiety anger impatience impact your sleep your appetite
your pain levels your overall immunity and health your mood your attitude your relation and and your
relationships while you waited or endured learning something while you waited for something to happen
in the chapter on patience there are five strategies for developing
patients and obviously there's lots of other strategies but i highlighted five
the first one is going to be to define what patients looks like and it's important
to really know how do i know if i'm being patient what does that look like to me and
a lot of us have different role models so you're going to figure out what it is that patience looks
like so you know when you've developed it this next activity i call beta testing beta stands
for breathe evaluate think and act when something happens that might trigger that impatient reaction
taking a breath stepping back evaluating the situation thinking and then acting
set micro goals this helps you focus on progress instead of only getting a reward or only feeling
accomplished when you've achieved perfection practice empathy and perspective taking
in order to have patience like i said with my kids when we were in the store
you know i got frustrated because there was a lot of stuff that i needed to get i needed to
get the grocery shopping done or what have you and they were being less than compliant however when
stepping back and saying okay it's four o'clock they've been at school all day they've had to hold
it together you know it's late they're hungry okay you know from that perspective i can see how they
may not be or they may be having more difficulty behaving the way i want them to behave and finally
radically accept what's going on and use distress tolerance skills and radical acceptance means
embracing the good with the bad it's raining outside today okay well i prefer sunny days but
it's rinsing off my car for me and it's watering my garden so radical acceptance means
recognizing that every situation has positives and negatives to it and embracing them as a whole
the book contains discussion writing meditation prompts and activities
for each of these strategies so each day you've got activities that you can do in order to develop
these strategies for patients patients can help you cope with things that are out of your control
and slow down to improve your effectiveness patience with yourself improve self-esteem
patience with others improves your relationships with them patience helps you more effectively
use your energy to change the things you can instead of being angry and frustrated
over the things that you can't change or aren't happening fast enough effectiveness
self-esteem and healthy relationships are all resources that can help you develop abundance