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Patience and the Big Picture

Instant Gratification has become an epidemic addiction that’s eating us alive as individuals and as a society. You may remember the phrase: “Patience is a Virtue?” Why do we ignore this? Will we give ourselves a couple minutes to even read this post through?

We have excuses and justifications like “I’m a Big Picture thinker,” as if they were related. The only relationship between being a Big Picture thinker and a lack of patience is the one we create. They’re not mutually exclusive; in fact they work together to create a superior outcome. We just need to put in the effort to learn patience.

The instant gratification plague adds to an almost “crazed,” frantic rush in our lives with little connection to reality. It’s as if we look at biological time and digital time as the same thing. In the natural world we’re still a part of, things take time. It takes years to grow up. It takes months to develop a relationship. It takes weeks to develop a habit. We’re biological creatures, and live in biological time. There’s no digital app for skipping over a learning process. There’s nothing I can click on to understand you. We have to communicate.



Impatience shows up in many ways, but let’s use a really blatant example: driving. How many bicyclists get hit by people in too much of a hurry to stop and look before turning? Why do people roll red lights when there are pedestrians crossing? All we can do is blurt the vague “I have no time!” that’s being fed into our brains from every direction. It just isn’t true.


Thinking Beats Reacting
Thinking is different than reacting to a cultural cattle prod. Critical thinking tells you that a few seconds here or there on the road is meaningless, (unless you’re an Emergency Vehicle.) There are no trophies or cash prizes for beating somebody through a light. There’s really no upside, save the invented illusion that we’re somehow winning something.

The one second made racing to the stop sign is ridiculous. You can’t make up the fifteen minutes from leaving the house late (do the math: you need 900 one second races to make 15 minutes, each of which could result in an accident.) The downside is astounding, but time-scarcity shuts off our imagination. It has to be shut off to not think of a puppy or a child potentially running out into the road.

Driving makes a dramatic point, but the downsides of impatience riddle the rest of our lives as well. Impatience damages our communication, our relationships, and the quality of our lives. It has no upside. Nothing is improved by impatience.

Rushing is not fast. There are more clichés and proverbs around rushing than just about any other issue we face. “A stitch in time saves nine,” “Penny-wise and pound-foolish,” “measure twice and cut once,” and my favorite from the Navy SEALS: “slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”


Happy Solutions, Boundless Benefits
Patience offers us countless positive outcomes. Safety (physical, emotional, communicative) for all is enhanced on a quantum level. There’s also the very real biochemical difference in the way we feel when we’re pleasant, patient, and kind, versus the way we feel when we’re brusque, impatient, and surly.

Our impatience drives us to push conversations faster, to rush the person speaking, to interrupt, and to assume what they were going to say, so why wait for them to finish? Not only are we missing details, but we’re doing damage, running over their feelings. By being more patient with one another, and more conscious with our communication, we can get more done well in less time, and that’s what we wanted in the first place.



In the midst of our busy lives, we’re bombarded with messages that often connect success to being mean, rushing, and grabbing for ourselves. You may have noticed it’s not making us feel better or improving the world around us. Being more patient, compassionate, and looking at the Big Picture will absolutely make us feel better, and will improve the world around us. It’s an easy choice, when you slow down and think about it.

If you want to reach higher altitudes; catapulting your communication and relationship skills, give me a call or email me. We can design a tailored program to fit your needs and desired outcomes. There's no limit to how high you can fly.

     - Ian J. Blei

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Quick Communication Tip:
Let Them Go First

One of the chapters in “Kind Ambition” dealing with how we treat one another, has an exercise related back to the road:

"Let someone go first at a four-way stop sign, let them get in or out of a parking spot on a busy street, and give them acknowledgement as well: a smile, a nod, or both. Notice how good you feel at the end of the day. Notice that your productivity did not suffer one iota." I’d bet it actually increased.

Sincerely,