Patience Can Help

What is patience?

Patience is valuable in many aspects of life, including health, and it can take practice. Even though it involves waiting, it isn't passive. Even though it can take take time, and often more time than trying to force an outcome to happen, it's not made up of empty time. Patience involves the ability to accept that while not everything is within your control, there are things within reach that you can do to help you get what you want.

Impatience can often set in from the fear that things won't work out, and that if you hurry things up or control situations you can increase the chances. It can be challenging to relax the feeling that everything has to be under control at all times. Fears may arise that it will all fall apart and head in a direction you don't want. Outside of control, life is happening and there's a natural flow to it. That natural flow is more accessible when you invite patience to take part in what's important to you. Will you always know the outcome? No, but the outcome may turn out to be more your style than if you'd decided beforehand how things should turn out.

Patience isn't always the most comfortable feeling in the moment, but in the long run it can help set a healthy pace and rhythm to life and opportunities. It can also give you a chance to clearly picture what you want in life. What areas of life have you felt rushed or impatient about, and how can you breathe more patience into them?

The Feeling: "I don't care..."

Ever had a feeling pop up that sounds and feels like "I don't care"? These moments can feel disconcerting when they do come up, but they're also a part of life and can be valuable to go through. The thought "I don't care" may not be saying you don't care at all, but more so that you're sick of caring about expectations and pressures that don't suit who you are as a person.

Sometimes we can get wrapped up in caring about things that aren't really important to us. Expectations that we place on ourselves can tell us that we should care about A, B, or C. Where did A, B, and C come from? Wherever they came from, if they don't mean something real to your life they can make you feel like you don't care. It's probably because you really don't care about those expectations.

Expectations and requirements that we impose on our lives can also eclipse things that we actually do care about. A, B, and C can send messages that the things we do care about are meaningless in the face of what should be. When "I don't care" comes up, the true wants are bubbling up under the surface waiting to be noticed again. "I don't care" can mean "I do care". . . about parts of life that are being neglected or dismissed in the face of artificially imposed values. It can also be scary to care about real things, because we feel like it will hurt less in case they don't work out.

Next time you have a feeling of "I don't care," try and think of whether you're paying attention to things you don't care about over those things that you naturally do value.