As a mother of three young children, patience is something that I so need, and yet it isn’t always easy to keep hold of it when you’re running late…again! In this video, I talk about the importance of patience and how to use self-care to be more patient and successful in your life and work.

Do you struggle to stay patient? Have you noticed a correlation between self-care and your patience levels? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments. If you found the ideas in this post useful I would be honoured if you shared it with your network.

Transcript

– – Hello, it’s Dr. Sally Graddon, the Life Balance Doctor, here.

I wanted to talk a bit about patience today. I was with my family this morning, and there was a lot of grumpiness going on. And I was very aware of how difficult it can be to keep your patience, to stay present in the moment, and not just go diving off the deep end and lose yourself, and lose control of the situation at the same time.

As I thought about it, I realised how patience affects all of us in many different ways. Yes, it can be to do with our families and our children, and whether we can stay patient with our spouses and our friends and family. But it’s also patience with ourselves, when we feel as though we’re not doing as good a job as we could do, or perhaps we’ve made mistakes. And also in our businesses, and in our work and our careers.

It’s so easy to get carried away and feel as though we should be doing everything and having the results that we want right here, right now. But actually, we need patience. We need to be patient with ourselves, and accept that it takes time to achieve the things that we want. It takes time and energy and effort to get where we want to go, be who we want to be, and to deal with those situations with our children and our families, when we need to take that extra time.

So what I ended up coming round to was this thought that actually, to be patient, we need self-love, we need self-care. When we don’t look after ourselves, when we don’t give ourselves the time that we need to do the things that give us the energy, that make us light up and that make us happy, then we don’t have the energy to do all those other things. We don’t have the energy and the patience to talk nicely to our partners at the end of the day when we’re tired. We don’t have the wherewithal to not just snap at our children when they do something, when they’ve lost their shoes for the 15th time and are procrastinating about getting out of the door.

And when we haven’t been looking after ourselves, we don’t have patience to do the things we need to, in our businesses, in our work, in our careers. We don’t have the patience to be kind to ourselves, and accept our flaws, accept that every single mistake we make is in fact an opportunity for growth and learning. And when we don’t have that patience and that energy to see that, we miss out on so much.

So I invite you to take some time today to refill your cup. Do some of the things that you love to do that you know bring you energy, and that make you feel good, because that, in turn, will increase the patience you have with yourself, and others. And you will start to recognise the opportunities that are right in front of you for growth, and healing, and improving.

So let me know how you are going to boost your own patience today. What are you going to do to look after yourself, so that you have the reserves to draw upon?

I’d love to hear from you.

Take care, bye-bye.