Why am I patient with people?
It is not easy to be patient, especially with un-self-aware people, people that do not seem to see even a little bit of their impact on others. Tasha Eurich in her book “Insight: The Surprising Truth About How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why the Answers Matter More Than We Think” classifies them into three main categories, which I believe can be fuzzy, in real world they may overlap: Lost Cause, Aware Don’t Care, and Nudgable. We just have hopes for the last one! I believe I myself have been several times on this last category. Why am I mentioning this here? The reason is that the Lost Cause and the Aware Don’t Care are the ones that test our patience the most. Why am I patient with those people?
I see three possible scenarios for being patient with them, they all are saving energy strategies, precious energy I can save and use with my friends and work: i) the world has become a patient place (~0,00001%), and I don’t know that yet; ii) other people will do the duty work of losing patience (~0,99%); iii) he/she loses patience selectively with me. The last case is something like abuse, and it is the hardest one to handle; in general when I have to handle abusive people, I try to find something for me, say, I am saving money, and the amount may be worth it; of course, there are limits! Let’s take a look at the two first possible scenarios, excluding here the abuse related scenario, which in my opinion may require other strategies.
The world had become a patient place (~0,00001%), and I don’t know. I would love this to happen, but I think it is highly improbably. For me people are patient because they gain a level of self-awareness beyond the common people, the average. One must not mistake ‘patient’ with ‘passivity’, it is like mistaking ‘confidence’ with ‘ego’, ‘flu’ with ‘cold’. To be patient is when someone is self-aware that they can put at work some important aspects of patience: i) empathy; ii) seek to understand then to be understood. Which means that you are so confident that you do not see your identity at stack because someone is slow-learning, you do not need to daily reassure your intelligence at the cost of mistreating others. I have the theory that every impatience comes from unsolved internal conflicts, and lack of abilities to handle emotions at a daily situation (low emotional intelligence). I am not claiming here that one can succeed to always be patient, maybe some can, but not me and people that I know. Even the most patient person needs to make a continuous effort to be patient, given the ego-depletion, as some call stressful situation, they will lose control; what have been showed in some psychological experiments. Thus, this premise is highly questionable. But, should it be true, I do not want to be the one that brings impatience back to the world, or that moves the mass towards impatience in a world walking toward the beautiful crystal patience. Thus, I believe it is better to let it go, control our reactions.
Other people will do the duty work of losing patience (~0,99%). This scenario for me it highly probable. For me patient people can be called, borrowing the term from Tasha Eurich, a unicorn. I have a feeling, a guess, that patience and self-awareness are positively correlated, and strongly correlated. Which means, in plain English, that patient people are most likely to be more self-aware than the average, and self-aware people are most likely to be patient people. As so, they are rare. Which means that other will indeed lose patience with an un-self-aware people easily; it is highly probably that the next person they use the same behavior they will be called for. You may say, “you are mean!”. Tasha Eurich make a very good point regarding confronting a un-self-aware person: when is it worth to awake up an un-self-aware person? Sometimes it can cost you a lot, maybe your job, maybe the apartment you are living right now and you like it a lot, maybe, more important, your internal peace! Therefore, it is worth to consider whether it is worth confronting an un-self-aware person; usually, people consider more effective to confront, is it true? Gill Hasson makes good points regarding dealing with difficult people in her book “How to Deal with Difficult People: Smart Tactics for Overcoming the Problem People in Your Life”. Therefore, for saving energy, let it go, and be patient, let the next one does the duty work, to spread impatient, and leave your conscience free. The best thing one can do is learning to control their reactions (one of the seven pillars of self-awareness, according to Tasha Eurich).
Of course, no strategies will always work, no panacea. Situations of abuse, like living with a narcissist, may call for more strong actions. But this is out of scope of my text.
