Patience is *not a Virtue or: How to Have More Patience
With kids, with parents, at work, or in traffic… the stresses of modern life can tax our patience big time. When you blow your stack, you’re not weak. You’re just tired.
“Patience is a virtue.” People say this all the time, and they’ve said it for hundreds of years. (The saying is dated back to the 14th, 13th, or 5th Century.) This phrase has staying power. It’s too bad that it’s wrong.
Patience is not a virtue. Thinking about patience as a virtue sets us up for failure and criticism. Think about it. If patience is a “virtue,” then when I snap at my kid for—let’s say—singing Baby Shark 2,000 times in a row at top volume, then I’m being unvirtuous. Grumbling in the long line at the store? Unvirtuous. Hanging up on that telemarketer? Unvirtuous! Cursing when the stop light won’t turn green and I’m running late? Unvirtuous!!! Ugh. All this criticism of my character is making me feel like a real jerk. I’m actually starting to lose patience with myself for not having patience!
Is there a different way to think about patience? A way that can give us a little grace?
What if we thought of patience as an activity—something you do instead of a way you are? Patience as an activity you practice instead of being a personality trait or a moral quality—why, this would mean that some days you’re good at it, and some days it’s more difficult. But the more you do it, the better you get at doing it. If patience is an activity, then it becomes something you can learn how to improve and to which you can apply different techniques. Most importantly, if patience is an activity, (not a moral virtue, or a state of being), then we know that all it really takes is knowledge, practice, and energy!
Patience takes energy to do, because it’s an action—not a passive state of being.
Put another way: patience is an expenditure of energy. When we look at patience like this, we suddenly have things we can do to increase patience. We can also have more self compassion for when we come up short and find ourselves rolling our eyes at our loved ones. Let’s look at how seeing patience as an energy-using activity puts it in our control and gives us more self compassion.
In my practice, I often introduce the concept of "energy dollars" as a metaphor for managing one's limited emotional energy reserves. When you wake up each morning, you only have so many energy dollars, and it’s up to you how you invest and spend them. Some costs are fixed—certain things you must do. But in other areas you have choice about if or how you spend your dollars, which may only be about how you go about the transaction—for example: with help or alone.
I find that using this abstract representation to explain the finite nature of emotional energy makes the concept of self-care more immediately graspable and puts clients in control of their process. By framing emotional energy as a valuable but exhaustible resource, clients can become more mindful of how they allocate their energy throughout the day—and more forgiving of themselves when they overdraft. (We all go into the red sometimes.) Applying this concept directly to the emotionally charged activity of patience often yields increases in insight, self-compassion, and interpersonal effectiveness.
Putting it into action: Doing patience.
When you decide to let go of patience as virtue and look at it as an activity that takes emotional energy, you can stop criticizing yourself when you “lose” your patience. You can also be planful and intentional about how you approach situations that are going to demand active patience. Here are some ways this can help in real-time.
When you know you’re going to need patience, you can rest-up, take a nap if you have time, do something that gives you energy before-hand, or explain to others that you may need some help going in.
When you find yourself running low, you can check-in on how much longer you think you can sustain this level of patience. Then you can plan and prepare for an exit from the situation or a hand-off of repsonsibility to another person.
When you do not have resources or time to rest or hand-off some of the load, noticing that your energy has depleted can give you the acceptance needed to not fight the inevitable—that you are no longer capable of practicing patience. This awareness and acceptance can liberate you from “acting out” in frustration or anger. You can watch your fuze fizzle out rather than feeling your bomb blow up.
These are just some of the ways that reframing the concept of patience can put you in the driver’s seat of your life. You have more active control than you think. Whether you’re dealing with general anxiety, relationship difficulties, parenting issues, or managing trauma reminders, your patience is going to be tested. Let’s be proactive. Let’s not be patient anymore. Let’s do patience.
You can learn the skill of doing patience through therapy, meditation, counseling or coaching. Please reach out if you have any questions about how to cultivate this skill or where to seek help.
