How to Be More Patient
I’ll be the first to say that patience is not my virtue. I move quickly around the world and often expect everyone else to be just as proactive and effective – whether it is answering emails within 24 hours or inserting a credit card into a card reader, for example, while the cashier is reviewing your products. … (Come on people! It’s much faster this way!)
This means that it can be easy for me to get upset when I’m stuck in a long slow line, whether I’m trying to buy milk or waiting to go through airport security.
But I rarely do this.
First, let’s be honest about the podcasts. (I’m not sure how I survived the infinity of the world before podcasts became a thing – although I do remember that at one point I was the person who carried the book with me everywhere).
And secondly, because at some point I learned the fact that lines take time. Finding a job takes time. Anything about waiting for someone else to respond takes time, and you can rarely control exactly how long it will take.
This means that I was curious about a new study published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior that suggests that the secret to patience is to think concretely (that is, realistic) about the experience and avoid abstract or negative assumptions. As Fast Company explains:
The trick is to think as concretely as possible, which makes you perceive the wait times as short as possible. Avoid abstract thinking, which usually gives negative meaning to your expectation and generates negative emotions. “When someone is late for a call, if you’re thinking abstractly, you might think that they don’t respect your time or think that the call is important, and therefore you can get angry,” says Dorit Efrat-Treister. organizational psychologist at Ben Gurion University. “But if you think they may have just lost your number or received another call first, you won’t be so annoyed.”
In other words: you are not stuck in a queue because the person in front of you is oblivious to what is going on around them (“why didn’t you think of getting a driver’s license from your wallet before the TSA agent?”), You are stuck in a queue. because that is the nature of the queues.
And you’re waiting for an answer about this interview because that is the nature of your job search – not to mention that while job search may be your # 1 priority, filling an open position is just one of many potential employer’s priorities. may try to balance.
Even the expectation of a child who takes forever to put on a shoe can be fleshed out; maybe they are still figuring out how to manipulate the Velcro straps or laces, or maybe they are also trying to balance several competing priorities (like putting on shoes or playing with toys) and they haven’t quite grasped this in some situations with shoes at first location.
So try to go through life with as specific a perspective as possible. There will be movement; bosses will be late for meetings; The person in front of you in the grocery line will not have their own bonus card and will have to give their phone number to the cashier. These are not anomalies that are holding you back; these are the realities of life.
And if you can while away the time by listening to a podcast, well, that’s always an option.