Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Patience and Persistence: Two P’s in a Pod

"A man who is a master of patience is master of everything else." ~George Savile


I will be the first to tell you that my husband has the patience in our family (as him and I are ying and yang). Since I began my Buddhist practice, I have changed my perspective on a lot of things and I am currently working on being more patient. As I have grown older, I have come to realize that patience is really important because otherwise you drive yourself crazy waiting and wanting something big to happen.


Lately, I have found myself becoming less concerned with the ‘where will I be in 5 years’ and more concerned with ‘living happy right here, right now.’ Oddly since I began practicing that perspective things have changed significantly all on their own. But for every ounce I lack in patience, I make up for in persistence. I have spent a lot of my time being persistent about everything. Making sure I am doing my best at all my jobs, being a nicer person, being a healthier person, looking for positive opportunities and all of those actions have resulted in positive events in my life.


I was recently promoted to a specialist position with the Division of Continuing Education, which was a major milestone to me since I lost my previous specialist position to a more tenured colleague. The reason I was chosen… because the college requested me – in fact both the College of Education and Division of Continuing Education requested me. Not too shabby to actually have my efforts and work noticed. I have been overachieving in every way possible when it comes to my work lately because I truly want to be the best at what I do - with the hope that my patience will earn me the perfect job (which will hopefully involve telecommuting).


"As for goals, I don't set myself those anymore [...] I take things as they come and find that patience and persistence tend to win out in the end." ~Paul Kane


Since I have been working on my patience, random positive things have happened to me. Yesterday the healthy café in my building opened and I wanted to go down and try their soup, it was around 9:30am and the woman apologized and said they wouldn’t have soup until tomorrow then proceeded to give me a free lunch card. When I returned to the café in the afternoon, they had soup and I enjoyed a free lunch because I had been patient enough to wait.


This morning I made the same attempt to start my morning off with soup, the girl at the counter said the soup was ready and as I was waiting patiently, the chef came out again and apologized that the daily tomato basil soup wasn’t ready but I could try the tortilla chili soup instead and proceeded to give me another free lunch card. This is just a small sampling of how my persistence and patience have paid off!


"Energy and persistence conquer all things." ~Benjamin Franklin


Even though I may not have the perfect job (yet) or the perfect life situation, I do have everything that matters – so there’s no need to really worry because I know with my Buddhist practice, my persistence and my newfound patience things can only go up from here.

2 comments:

Carrie L said...

Great reminder, Jennifer. When we're patient and trust that things will work out, we're less irritable, stressed and all those negative feelings go away. Not to say being patient is easy but I think it takes practice like anything else. Btw, a good affirmation is "all is well and everything is already perfect in my world." The key is to frame what you want in the present tense as if you already have it, so your subconscious believes it to be true.

Carrie L said...

Btw, check out this website if you're interested in working with your subconscious to help achieve what you want:
http://www.brainsync.com/shop/
I have several of these CDs by Kelly Howell. They are guided meditations and I think they are effective at least with helping to keep your thoughts aligned with what you are trying to achieve whether that's better health, personal happiness, relationships, etc.