Impatient people simply can’t wait.
They want to hear the news, achieve the outcome, and talk through the problem right NOW.
They’ve been told repeatedly over the years that they need to slow down, “hold their horses,” and accept what they cannot control. But they find waiting painful. Their intolerance for delay makes them anxious and unhappy while waiting for just about anything.
They’ve heard and taken some of the sound advice others have offered them. They’ve practiced deep breathing, meditation, emotion shifting, and perspective-taking.
They have learned to recognize what triggers their impatience and do their best to become more deliberate when they experience the negative feelings of delay.
But despite their best efforts, the need to go fast and accomplish what they want immediately shrinks their attention span and allows their impatience to spiral.
Self-regulation evaporates under the heat of urgent, excitable, or stressful situations. Even their curiosity makes them more impatient than they should be. In a word, they are “hopelessly” impatient.
Although they fully recognize their impatience disrupts relational harmony, deteriorates their problem-solving abilities, elevates their stress and anxiety, and harms their decision-making, they can’t resist the need for immediate satisfaction.
Most have given up fighting this urge and willingly take their lumps when others admonish them for going too fast.
But a simple strategy to defeat this derailer exists even for the hopelessly impatient.
Instead of slowing down and waiting for what they want to know, do, or achieve, cravenly impatient people need to speed up at something else.
The secret of being patient for those hopelessly flawed is to do something else while they are waiting that fully distracts them from their impatience.
The instant you realize you are getting the sensations of impatience, you must occupy yourself by going deep, fast, and furious at something else: a task, activity, problem, or experience.
The idea is not to fight your desire for impatience but to feed it. Only you focus your impatience on something else that takes all your attention and energy and allows you to temporarily forget the original source of your angst.
For the hopelessly impatient, the best way to overcome their restlessness is not to. Directing their avidity toward another target allows them to wait on an issue that would benefit from a slower approach.
Sometimes, using a weakness against itself makes us stronger.
A Daily Dispatch from the Front Lines of Leadership.
