Education & Career Trends: June 12, 2023
Curated by the Knowledge Team of ICS Career GPS
- Excerpts are taken from an article published on psychologytoday.com.
Many qualities are necessary to grow personally and become the best versions of ourselves, including motivation, hope, confidence, focus, resilience, persistence, perseverance, and much more. These traits, though necessary, may not be sufficient to make the life changes you want and be the person you want to be.
Patience may be the most important attribute you need to possess to make meaningful changes in your life because change is hard and slow. Without patience, you won’t devote the time and energy necessary to allow those changes to emerge.
The “power of patience” can be described as “the propensity to wait calmly in the face of frustration or adversity.”
This description of patience is truly an admirable quality we all would like to possess. Philosophically, everyone older than a child knows that nothing of value in life comes quickly or without hard work, whether education, career, avocation, or relationship.
A Culture of Impatience
Yet, patience is in very short supply these days because the messages we get from our “impatient” culture can be difficult to resist. So much of our lives today are governed by immediate access to whatever we want and instant gratification of our needs. This culture of impatience has been exacerbated by the emergence of digital technology over the last 25 years. From the seemingly ancient (think fax machine and microwave) to the most up-to-date (think internet search, streaming, and texting), it seems like life is at our fingertips instantaneously and with little effort.
Impatience is the most common reaction and the greatest obstacle to the always slow, oftentimes unpredictable, and never linear journey to positive life change. The unfortunate consequence of the absence of patience is the inability to do what’s necessary to improve your life. Impatience begins with a set of perceptions and beliefs:
- “This is taking forever.”
- “My goal is unachievable.”
- “I’m never going to change.”
- “I just can’t do this.”
- “What’s wrong with me?”
- “I give up!”
Negative Emotional Chain
In turn, these perceptions and beliefs trigger the “negative emotional chain,” which comprises three links: frustration, anger, and despair. These links in the negative emotional chain are not only immense obstacles to positive life change but are actually sabotaging by making that desired change more difficult at a practical level and aversive at an emotional level.
Patience is the Key
Patience begins with an emotion. That emotion is hope. And with that emotion comes a belief that if you stay committed to the changes you want to make, good things will happen. Without hope or believing that good things will happen, you will simply not have faith that change is possible. Patience also encompasses several essential ways of looking at yourself and the challenges you face as you work to become the best version of yourself:
- Be driven by your life goals and an inner determination to change (change must come from within).
- Have a long-term perspective (change takes time).
- Stay committed to your goals no matter what happens (change has ups and downs).
- Make your commitment to change a moment-to-moment choice (you have the power).
From this foundation of patience, you can then build your new self with persistence (continuing to try), perseverance (overcoming difficulties), and resilience (getting back up when you fall down). When you take patience and add all of these other ingredients to your recipe for positive life change, you set yourself up to know what lies ahead and are willing to stay the course until you become the person you’ve always dreamed of.
…
Have you checked out yesterday’s blog yet?
Top 10 Programming Languages for Chatbot Development in 2023
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article mentioned above are those of the author(s). They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of ICS Career GPS or its staff.)
Like this post? For more such helpful articles, click on the button below and subscribe FREE to our blog.
Download our mobile app, ICS Career GPS, a one-stop career guidance platform.
One Reply to “The Power of Patience for Positive Life Change”