How To Become More Patient With Stoicism

We all know these people, waiting nervously in a queue, lamenting that everything takes so long. They're looking into the mirror after one week of doing sports and are frustrated that the results aren't showing already. A webpage is loading slowly, the ordered coffee takes longer than expected, or a colleague doesn't answer a message immediately while the deadline is near. Sounds familiar? Don't blame yourself if you're one of them; that's why you're here. To learn ways to train yourself to become more patient. 

Patience is a virtue, but it's something that most of us struggle with - at least in one or another area of life. 

One point to mention before we start leaving impatience behind. Overcoming impatience requires patience. Even ancient techniques from Stoicism practiced for centuries can't offer a shortcut. But don't let this fact hold you back. With just a little effort, you'll soon progress, and the everyday hassles are nothing more than a test of will to master patience. 

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TL;DR

• Patience is the ability to endure and continue without lamenting or nuisance.
• Patience can bring a lot of advantages, including better relationships, health, success, and resilience.
• Impatience is a feeling of restlessness or irritability triggered by uncertainty or resistance.
• Techniques from Stoic philosophy can assist immensely in becoming more patient.

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What is patience?

Patience can be characterized as the ability to endure difficult situations or delays without getting angry or upset. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as "the ability to wait, or to continue doing something despite difficulties, or to suffer without complaining or becoming annoyed." 

Patience involves controlling emotions and thoughts when faced with challenging circumstances. Even when provoked or insulted, a patient person keeps their cool and doesn't get carried away to respond angrily or disrespectfully. It's a key skill in Stoicism and a character trait Stoics strive for on their journey to a happy life.

So, what's the takeaway? To become more patient, we need to train our ability to endure and learn how to control our state of mind.

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Why is it important to be patient?

You'll benefit from being patient in many ways.

First, you don't get as quickly upset anymore. Your peace of mind becomes unshakable, leading to a state of apatheia - a Stoic term describing a mental state free of passion. While you'll be shaping your character toward excellence or arete, you get more likely to live a eudaimonic life, the goal of Stoicism.

Second, having patience makes you a more involved, self-confident, and healthier member of society and positively impacts those around you. 

Third, mastering patience is a sign of self-control or self-discipline, one of the four Stoic virtues. A high level of self-control correlates with positive adjustment, higher grades, interpersonal success, better relationships, and healthier behavior like less binge eating or alcohol abuse.¹

Lastly, patience can help to build resilience. Staying calm allows you to deal with challenges more efficiently while keeping an unswerving mind. 

Feeling motivated? I hope so. As you've seen, there are plenty of reasons to train yourself to be more patient.

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What is impatience, and what causes it?

Now we know who we want to become and how to benefit from patience. Next, let's take a closer look at who we currently are. Eventually, we want to learn to be more patient, which suggests we're slightly more impatient fellows, right? But why is that? The answer will ultimately pave the way to becoming a genuinely patient individual.

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Impatience explained

You might feel intense vexation when you're impeded or delayed. Even the most minor mistakes of others can annoy you, like a fly buzzing around your ear. That's impatience. It's intolerance against anything that impedes you or what you believe hinders you. Impatience is feeling restless or short-tempered, especially under delay or opposition.

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Finding its root cause

Picture this: It's a typical weekday morning. Diligent as you are, known for your punctuality, you want to leave the house at 7:30 am to make it to the office. You have a crucial presentation today. Your son, let's name him Tommy, must catch the school bus at the same time. As your spouse is ill, you have to ensure he's on time. But this morning, Tommy decides that he'd like to savor his breakfast, chewing at the deliberate pace of a sloth. The minutes are ticking, and you urge Tommy to hurry up. You get nervous, and as the clock strikes 7:25 am, you lose your cool and snap Tommy to finish breakfast, immediately showing your annoyance.

Can you feel it? Well, impatience doesn't stem out of nowhere. There's always a causing triggering event leading to a reaction. In our example, Tommy's coziness of a sloth is the trigger; the reaction is obvious. However, that's just half of the truth and doesn't fully capture the root cause of impatience. 

According to Stoicism, before you respond to a trigger, you give assent to your judgment about an event being harmful or impeding. An untrained person does this unconsciously and doesn't even notice their agreement to their hidden judgment. 

In your mind, you form a judgment that being late at the office will impact your work negatively, and your son's behavior is, therefore, bad (for you). In a split second, you approve this judgment as true because you don't look at alternative perspectives. Or have you considered Tommy's point of view? 

This cognitive action of giving assent to your judgment is ultimately the gatekeeper to your response.

Getting closer - 7 components of impatience

By now, we have identified four components of impatience:

1. Your trigger.
2. Your judgment.
3. Your assent or consent.
4. Your reaction.

Still, there's more to the story of you and your imaginary son. Your goal is to be at work on time to hold your presentation. And you have an estimated period to make it there. Your time is limited. Furthermore, you expect to be punctual and assume that everyone around you does everything to fulfill this expectation. Now it looks like this:

1. Your Goal.
2. Your estimated time to reach that goal.
3. Your expectation that everything will go as intended.
4. Your trigger.
5. Your judgment.
6. Your assent or consent.
7. Finally, your reaction.

To make it more widespread, I want to tweak our second component slightly. As there's always more than time, we can replace the estimated time with the term cost.² Why? Because it's the cost we accept to reach our goal. But let's quickly prove it with two other examples.

Consider the example of a well-experienced runner. On her vacation in a romantic mountain village, she underestimated the difference between running in the mountains and her usual tracks. So, the longer her run takes, the more her muscles burn and the more impatient she gets. It costs her more than expected in terms of time and pain.

Or imagine you're a project manager. Your new team member lacks experience in a specific software. After repeatedly explaining the same concepts to him for a couple of weeks, your impatience grows. It's adding to your workload and slows the entire project down. Again, it costs more than expected in terms of time and effort.

Exposing the roots - the 4 sections of impatience

Let's make it more tangible by grouping the cause of impatience into four sections.

Conditions

• You have a goal.
• You have allocated estimated costs regarding time or something else like pain, effort, money, etc.
• You have a clear expectation about the process and the outcome.

Trigger

• You encounter a trigger, teaching you that your costs to reach your goal will be higher.

Cognitive Process

• You form a judgment about the triggering event.
• You give assent, most often unconsciously, that your judgment is appropriate. 

Reaction

• Finally, you take action and try to reduce the increased cost.

That's it. We have the roots of impatience and a solid understanding of how they grow. In other words, we've developed a good concept we can always return to on our way to becoming more patient. 

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The positive side of impatience

At least, sometimes impatience can be helpful. Here are some scenarios. 

Emergency Situations: In critical situations where you must operate swiftly, impatience can help expedite decision-making, urging everyone to act fast.

Deadlines: When working under tight time constraints, we can get motivated to work efficiently and eliminate distractions.

Self-Motivation: A healthy dose of impatience can be a tremendous force to push yourself beyond your comfort zone.

Innovation and Change: Impatience can be a catalyst for innovation and change. When unsatisfied with the status quo, it enables you to find new solutions and drive progress.

In all these cases it's crucial to avoid impulsive or reckless behavior to make impatience a worthy driving force. Assess the situation, evaluate the potential risks, and act with calculated haste.

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8 Stoic practices to be more patient

Having covered the theory enables us to learn to be more patient in a structured way. Let's start with the fun part of our journey.

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Mindfulness

(Sections: Conditions, Trigger, Cognitive Process, Reaction)

"Attend to the matter which is before you, whether it is an opinion or an act or a word." Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.22

Paying attention to your mind and body in the present moment is a vital skill on the path to patience. In Stoicism, it's called prosoche (Stoic mindfulness).

It helps in many different ways:

• Before upcoming emotions break through, you feel them rising, and your patience ends. You might notice a faster heartbeat or nervousness. Recognizing these sensations enables you to stop and stay calm.
• You become aware of your goal, the costs you want to pay, and your expectations.
• Mindfulness helps you to identify your triggers, making it easier to manage them.
• It helps to handle the cognitive process of judgment and assent consciously.
• Lastly, you'll be able to choose your response wisely and purposefully instead of being the victim of your impatience.

Play with different methods, like meditation, journaling, breathing exercises, or mindfulness walking. Find what helps you to establish mindfulness.

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Manage expectations

(Sections: Conditions)

Never conflate expectations with commitments or agreements. Expect nothing as long as things are unspoken and no one has committed to your plans. In life, nobody is here to fulfill your expectations.

"Demand not that events should happen as you wish; but wish them to happen as they do happen, and you will go on well." Epictetus, Enchiridion 8

Why should Tommy eat hastily? He's too young to see the complete picture, let alone the consequences. Unrealistic expectations are nothing more than ignorance of life's uncertainties.

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Write a mantra

(Sections: Cognitive Process)

"If you take away your opinion about that which appears to give you pain, you yourself stand in perfect security." Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.40

I love Stoic mantras. It's such an easy way to remind ourselves of our intentions.

When you feel impatience rising, take a deep breath and say your mantra. Mantras stop the automatic cognitive process, helping you to reassess the situation and question your judgment. Then, you can consider all perspectives rational and assent appropriately. With enough experience, you have a powerful tool to overcome impatience.

Here are 10 examples:

1. This too shall pass.
2. Patience is power.
3. I'm patient and kind. Nothing external can harm me.
4. I control my emotions and reactions.
5. I choose to stay patient.
6. I won't let impatience conquer my peace of mind.
7. What a nice opportunity to practice patience.
8. I remain calm amidst the chaos.
9. I find strength in patience and reason.
10. Impatience, I was waiting for you. Try me, do your best, I remain calm.

Feel free to choose one or write your own mantra that resonates more with your personality.

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Learn to apply the dichotomy of control

(Sections: Cognitive Process, Reaction)

Life is full of unexpected events we can't control, and according to Stoicism, resisting is just a path to unhappiness. When we're constantly impatient, we're always in a negative or stressed state of mind. The ongoing tension between our goals, costs, and expectations brings us off balance. What to do? Concentrating on what we can control.

"What then is to be done? To make the best of what is in our power, and take the rest as it naturally happens." Epictetus, Discourses 1.1.17

First, you can challenge your judgment. How bad is it truly that Tommy eats so slowly? What's the real problem underneath? Maybe you fear being late because others can judge you as unprofessional or incompetent. Or is it that you fear losing your job? However, do those fears have evidence? Wouldn't it be possible for your colleagues to understand your situation as they are themselves parents? Could someone else start the presentation?

"Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things" Epictetus, Enchiridion 5

Even if the worst-case scenario happens and you lose your job, is that so terrible? Would you really want to work in an environment where family issues don't matter? Can you find another job?

There are always alternative perspectives; often, worst-case scenarios aren't as bad as our minds tend to make them.

Having questioned your judgment enables you to assent more rationally, leading to sounder responses.

Finally, let's discover a few choices you have to respond to your trigger.

• You could ask Tommy to eat faster.
• You could explain the situation and ask for his support (meaning eating faster).
• You could offer to pack the food so he can eat later.
• You could prepare his clothing so this part of the morning has no further delays.
• You could accept the situation and call the office saying you'll be late.

Or you can scream and go wild like a pressure cooker about to release its steaming. What do you think is more beneficial for your peace of mind?

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Negative visualization

(Sections: Conditions, Reaction)

This captivating exercise is also called premeditatio malorum. I recommend doing it every morning or evening to prepare for the day ahead.

"Everyone approaches courageously a danger which he has prepared himself to meet long before, and withstands even hardships if he has previously practiced how to meet them. But, contrariwise, the unprepared are panic-stricken even at the most trifling things. We must see to it that nothing shall come upon us unforeseen." Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, On Obedience to the Universal Will, 4

Think about the tasks you want to accomplish. Imagine your day as vividly as possible. Then, everything goes wrong. The worst-case happens to each of your tasks. Make it a profound imagination where you experience all the emotions connected with the worst-case.

Now, as you know what could happen, create your fallback scenarios. When your son causes a delay, what do you do? And what's your fallback when you likely will miss the office on time?

With your answers at hand, you'll be surely more patient as you already know what to do next.

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Reserve clause

(Sections: Conditions, Reaction)

"I will set sail unless anything happens to prevent me, I shall be praetor, if nothing hinders me, my financial operations will succeed, unless anything goes wrong with them." Seneca, Of Peace of Mind 13

The Stoic reserve clause is a simple yet powerful preparation against the unexpected. In combination with negative visualization, it becomes even more effective. By acknowledging beforehand that something can hinder you, this truth settles into your mind and loses its surprising effect.

Add a few words to your intention and read them out loud before you begin your day.

A few examples:

• God willing, I'll be at work on time and give my presentation.
• I'll be punctual at work, fate permitting.
• As long as nothing gets in my way, I'll make it to work on time.

Admitting higher forces you can't control makes you adaptable to the conditions and ensures a more patient reaction.

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Go beyond hearing

(Sections: Trigger, Cognitive Process, Reaction)

"In discourse you must attend to what is said, and in every movement you must observe what is being done. And in the one you should see immediately to what end it refers, but in the other watch carefully what is the thing signified." Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.4

There's more about listening than just hearing words. Active and empathetic listening is vital to foster understanding when others are involved. When truly comprehending what's going on, patience will follow, and you'll be more compassionate toward the other person and yourself.

Tommy may have a reason for eating like a sloth. Perhaps he's afraid of school or doesn't feel well. Or he's merely so intensely focused on the mouth-watering taste and texture of his food that he forgets everything around - remember, time is a tricky concept for children.

How about that coworker who continuously struggles with the software? Could there be anything you're missing, like private issues? Or is he stretched too thin but unable to communicate it out of fear?

Whatever it is, listen closely and use more than your eyes - then be proactive. That way, impatience will have a hard time.

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Prioritize

(Sections: Conditions, Cognitive Process, Reaction)

"Aiming therefore at such great things, remember that you must not allow yourself any inclination, however slight, towards the attainment of the others; but that you must entirely quit some of them, and  for the present postpone the rest. But if you would have these, and possess power and wealth likewise, you may miss the latter in seeking the former; and you will certainly fail of that, by which alone happiness and freedom are procured." Epictetus, Enchiridion 1

Epictetus' message is simple. Juggling too many tasks can easily become overwhelming. As we lose track of our goals, costs increase, and impatience grows. 

Therefore, not following what you're intrinsically striving for is a shortcut to impatience. You'll encounter enough obstacles anyway, so why add more voluntarily? Having a clear priority list for the major aspects of your life is a robust companion to avoiding tension between the four sections of impatience.

Let's assume you're priority is as follows: Family, Work, Hobbies, Household.

Tommy's behavior will delay your commute to work, but as the family has priority one, you do everything to handle the situation kind and loving without losing patience. To avoid struggles at work, you inform your boss about being late.

Now, let's switch our example up. You arrived at work a bit late, but your presentation was successful. Stunned by your communication skills and the well-prepared meeting, your boss asks for more. The next major project is yours! Knowing such a task will force intense strain between your family and work, you choose to deny the job opportunity.

The key message is: Get to know yourself! Learn what's essential and what values you want to live by. Who are you at your best? The answers will help you find clarity, prioritize better, sharpen your time management, and expand your adaptability when unexpected situations arise.

Conclusion

The benefits of being a patient person are exceptional, and every step you take will pay off sooner or later. While Stoicism's methods are a great ally on your path to becoming more patient, it requires the will to change as well as constant work. 

What are you waiting for? Start overcoming impatience and living a more tranquil life - you deserve it.

Resources:

¹ Wiley Online Library

² Psychology Today