By: Ashley Oliver, M.S.
This past week and a half I have had the pleasure of tagging along with my husband on a business school trip to Israel. Although it was more of a work trip for him, it was the perfect vacation for me. I love to travel, but given my graduate school budget the opportunities can be limited. So you understand my excitement for exchanging the stressful city for the beautiful beach.
I am not, by nature, a patient person and living in New York City has exacerbated my lack of patience. Though I love to travel and experience new cultures, my kryptonite tends to be exercising patience when necessary. Navigating a city in another country is not always the picture-perfect experience that Instagram would have us believe. My recent trip was filled with a lot of waiting at the airport, relaxed customer service, and dinners intended to last several hours as they are considered “an experience.” I had come to expect the instantaneous, the rapid, the get-it-done-right-now pace I was used to.
So here I was…less than 24 hours into my trip and I was feeling frustrated about the slow-moving nature of my trip thus far. Honestly, I felt silly even feeling the frustration I felt. After all, how could I be annoyed that my vacation is moving too slow?! Remember this: when you’re traveling, you’re not in control. You can’t change the fact that it might take you three hours to go through Customs at the airport, or that dinner at an amazing restaurant may have you sitting for hours before the bill comes. If you can’t control it, why stress and feel annoyed about it?
There is a lot of waiting involved when you travel. You can either be impatient or choose to adapt and get used to it. It was clearly serving no function for me to spend my vacation annoyed, and the truth is I wanted to enjoy all aspects of my vacation. I realized that getting impatient doesn’t help a taxi reach my hotel any sooner or have the waiter bring my food to me any faster. I was determined to loosen my controlling grip and Notice my surroundings, Slow down, and Reflect.
Frustration and annoyance will happen (morning, noon, and night there are plenty of reasons to be impatient). For me, frustration during my trip was a feeling of intolerance triggered when my needs were not met in the way I had outlined in my mind. So how do we deal with our low tolerance for frustrating situations? You can drive yourself crazy, behave irrationally, or try to force an outcome. Or, you can learn to transform frustration with patience. So rather than living out my vacation feeling annoyed and frustrated, I choose to practice patience. After several deep breaths and laying out on the beach, I began to unlock a bit of emotional freedom.
I found that practicing patience granted me the ability to have more self-control and not be controlled by arbitrary time constraints. I found myself purposely finding opportunities to exercise patience by finding a long, slow-moving line to wait in, waiting for my server to come to me, or walking to my destinations rather than driving. All while completing these tasks I told myself, “I’m going to slow down and enjoy the moment.”
By the last day of my trip, I felt more relaxed and rested than I have felt in a long time. Now that my vacation has officially come to an end and I am back to navigating the busy streets of NYC, practicing patience is being turned up a few notches (as you know the subway is the best place to test your patience). So whether on the subway, waiting in the line at the coffee shop, or just walking down any street in the city, let’s practice patience, slow down, and take in the moment.
How do you begin to practice patience? What can you say to yourself to remind you to slow down, reflect, and be in the moment?
