Patience

This is part 5 of a five part series on tools for going through life transitions.

The last tool when going through a major life transition is patience. Often times, we just want to zoom through our changes and get to the end. The attitude of having to get to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow can dissolve the power from the other tools like self-acceptance. You cannot be accepting of you and what is when you are in a rush to get to the end. A difficult transition requires lots of patience and gentleness. When you have altered your course in life, you are traveling on unknown roads. It may be scary or unfamiliar and patience helps you on your journey.

When you lose someone you’ve loved deeply, you may feel lost without them, buried in grief, patience is the only tool that can help you get through the darkest nights. Sometimes, we want to numb ourselves by keeping company, or doing stuff and when our friends are not available or we run out of things to do, we may find loneliness as a prison that we tried so hard to get away from. But loneliness is temporary and it will pass. In the middle of a transition, it could be your companion if you choose to look at it that way. Patience with yourself and this in-between phase is critical. It truly makes the time go by easier. You might find your creativity blossoming in those quiet and lonely moments, if you are accepting of it. If you fight it, get impatient and try to force things to happen, creativity will stay away until you are done playing your game. When you do get impatient, remember you changed your life, or something has changed, by definition, the old ways/rules do not apply anymore. Change is just what it means, different. Different is what we say we want, but we are not prepared to deal with the unfamiliarity that comes with it. Our brain cannot come up with new solutions, it only knows what it has known from the past. I have written about trust in past posts (September 08 and July 09), and this is where self-trust becomes crucial. Along with self-trust will come new solutions from new places foreign to your head.

Creativity is a gift that is waiting for you to stop doing, stop rushing into the future, stop numbing yourself and denying what is. Creativity is waiting for you to get silent, truly silent. Creativity will creep up on you when you are present. You’ll find yourself creating in a way that you may have had a long time ago, perhaps even back when you were a child. You will find yourself filled with a peaceful sense of being and from that place even making a simple meal for yourself will be a joyful event. You may decide to rearrange your furniture, or buy new drapes, or paint your bedroom a different color. You may decide to take dance lessons or go on that long awaited adventurous trip you never took, or simply clean out the attic. Whatever it is you do, is coming not from compulsion or duty, but from joy. You will be filled with an inner sense of joy and peace that is inexplicable. Nothing in your outer world has changed and if you think about it, your joy seems senseless, yet more real than any feeling you may have ever felt. When you practice patience in your journey, especially through the difficult times, you will be gifted with these precious moments consistently. So, step back and see the big picture, observe yourself in it, accept what is, honor everyone you’ve ever encountered, and be patient. These five tools are the essential tools in living a big life. If you fall off the wagon, and notice that you have not been using one of the tools, then go back and pick it up. It takes lots of practice! I wish you unspeakable peace and joy on your journey…