Patience

If you drive, you’ve probably experienced waiting at a traffic light, not moving off the millisecond the lights change and being hooted at by the impatient driver behind. For whatever reason, the driver cannot wait and we’re in their way. We share this planet with 7.7 billion other people, so we all have to wait at some point; waiting for the train, at the dentist, or the supermarket checkout. The trouble is, the world we live in today is built around pace, meeting deadlines and getting things done. In fact, research on Internet speeds shows that people start to lose patience after as little as a two-second delay. Living at a faster pace may mean we get more done, but when we’re forced to wait, we can become irritated, frustrated and even anxious, which builds up tension and stress in our body.

Patience is the ability to accept having to wait, be delayed or face setbacks without reacting. This means being more aware of what’s going on and working skilfully with thoughts and emotions that arise in our present-moment experience. If we’re unaware, our options are limited, so we’re more likely to react automatically. Practising patience is often a more skilful response.

So why is it that we find waiting such an unpleasant experience? The simple answer is that we’ve not learned to practise a deeper level of patience. Impatience is our mind’s way of leaning into the future; getting to the next moment, as if that moment is somehow more important and meaningful than our experience now. Impatience is a form of aversion, a desire to get rid of something. It’s also about resisting our experience, as we feel uncomfortable in the here and now.

As well as waiting, we can also feel impatient when we’re working on something, driven by anxiety about the need for completing whatever it is, rather than accepting and enjoying the on-going process. Our intolerance of accepting delay is an indicator of our tendency to live in a projected future in our heads.

So how can we cultivate patience?

Here are some tips on improving patience as a skill:

Be more aware of situations that test your patience, notice feelings and thoughts of discomfort, irritation, annoyance or anger before they really take hold, using curiosity to explore the emotions and physical sensations you’re experiencing.
Use each situation where you feel impatient as an opportunity to practise patience and see what difference that makes.
Is the situation really intolerable? Are you making exaggerated assumptions about how unpleasant the situation really is? When you are in the situation that challenges your patience, take a moment to really explore how uncomfortable it really is. Is this more about delaying you from future moments? Are the future moments any different from your present experience?
Become more aware of the tendency of your attention to drift off in thought, imagining what you may be doing in a future moment, rather than connecting with your actual lived experience in the present.
Pause, take a deep breath, accept the reality of the situation and open your awareness to the surprisingly rich experience that this moment holds.

Mindfulness is about working skilfully with your present-moment experience. Patience is one of these skills that can be learned and developed. When we’re impatient we can experience anxiety, anger, and stress, which are not skilful responses.

By developing patience, we also cultivate other skills of acceptance, openness, awareness, and kindness, and when we practise patience, we reduce anxiety, anger, and stress and improve our relationships. So, by practising patience we move towards an easier and healthier life.

Suggested weekly practice

Notice when you feel impatient during the week and instead bring patience.
Be curious about the situations that make you feel impatient.
Be aware of the habitual impulse to want to get to the next moment, as this one is unsatisfying and not good enough

Guidance
Find somewhere undisturbed and sit in a comfortable, dignified and upright posture, where you can remain alert and aware.
There are two guided practices for this session. You can close your eyes, or lower your gaze while the meditations play.

Play the settling practice, then read through the session content, which you can print off if that helps.
Then play the second audio to explore reacting and responding, as well as experiencing a calm, open, and alert state to respond skilfully to your experience.

Human paradox

In today’s world, we’ve never had so many ways to engage with each other, build relationships, make connections, and keep in touch; yet, post-pandemic, levels of loneliness are now higher than ever, with 3.3 million people classed as chronically lonely in the UK between 2021 and 2022. Rather than enabling the interconnected global village, some aspects of the internet, social platforms, and smartphones are encouraging unhealthy behaviours at the heart of the human condition. Instead of open and authentic sharing, we’re offered what’s called curated reality where, for instance, people post pictures of lavish meals in fancy restaurants, to boost their self-worth by appearing better than others. This is the same type of behaviour that, to be honest, most of us have some experience of. For example, feeling diminished by another’s success.

Although loneliness affects the older generation, there’s also a significant increase among younger adults. Around a million young adults in the UK are chronically lonely. Recent studies show that the more time young people spend on social media, the more they feel socially isolated and alone, which is no surprise given the distorted and emotionally troubling, curated reality they’re consuming.

So why are there unhealthy behaviours at the heart of the human condition and what’s the fundamental cause? At least part of the answer is that there’s an inherent paradox to being human; on the one hand, we’re separate individuals and on the other, we’re all part of the whole human family.

As Albert Einstein eloquently pointed out: “A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

On an individual level, we all have a unique body we call our own that has our thoughts, memories, feelings, history, and culture. Of course, our individual bodies, life experiences, and memories are uniquely ours. Yet science tells us that our bodies share around ninety-nine percent of the same genetic code, which is no surprise given we’re the same species. And in other areas, as the saying goes, “There’s nothing new under the sun”; most of our thoughts, beliefs, opinions, and culture come from the outside world through education, the media, or conversations.

So, the paradox is that we somehow negotiate two contradictory truths; one that we’re separate individuals, the other that we’re an interconnected part of the whole. On one side this paradox explains why we have a fundamental need to feel acknowledged, and experience love and connection, while on the other why we can feel isolated, lonely, and alienated, even when we live in a huge city. The fact is that everyone wants to be happy and fulfilled: your work colleagues, the difficult manager, the taxi driver, the waiter in the café, and the other commuters on the train.

It’s unfortunate that the most effective way of selling products in our consumer-led society is based on a value system that treats us as individuals but promises future happiness and fulfilment by persistently pointing out our limitations; that we’re not good enough unless we have the latest car, the new sofa, exotic holidays, and a large social network of fantastic and attractive friends. All this reinforces feelings of inadequacy and low self-worth and encourages unhealthy behaviours across younger generations.

So how can we flip this paradox and become individuals who are also interconnected with other people? One approach is by cultivating mindfulness and compassion; engaging the world and people around us with openness, friendliness, and kindness; using patience and acceptance, taking the time to see, hear and truly acknowledge other people; deeply recognising that everyone experiences times of vulnerability, difficulties and challenges, pleasure and pain and has a complex inner life just like our own. Exploring being individual AND being interconnected with the whole of life and humanity resolves the sense of isolation and disconnection, which helps us discover the full meaning of joy and happiness.

Suggested weekly practices

When you are next walking down a busy street by yourself, playfully explore seeing yourself and the other people as all connected at one level, rather than as separate isolated individuals.
Notice how much you rely on others in your life and consider what you do for other people.
Try to acknowledge strangers during the week, maybe talking in a friendly way to the person serving you in a shop or café.

Guidance
Find somewhere undisturbed and sit in a comfortable, dignified, and upright posture, where you can remain alert and aware.
There are two guided practices for this session. You can close your eyes or lower your gaze while the meditations play.

Play the settling practice, then read the session content, which you can print off if that helps.
Then play the second practice to explore inter-connection with others by practising loving kindness.

Trust

Imagine that you are driving on the motorway at seventy miles an hour in the middle lane, overtaking slower vehicles on one side and cars speeding past on the other. You feel relaxed, listening to the radio, thinking about plans for the weekend. All of this is possible because you’ve placed your trust in the other drivers, in the manufacturer of your car, and in the organisation that maintains the road. You may even trust your Sat Nav. You’re also trusting the learned habits of your brain to drive while your attention drifts in thought. As an alternative, you could travel by train, but then you’re still trusting the train driver and the railway operating company. When you think about it, our society would break down at once if we could not trust one another; social trust is the glue that binds everything together.

Some people find it easier to trust other people than others, which often links back to differences in parental attachment during childhood. Someone with a difficult upbringing may not automatically trust people in the same way as an individual who experienced a safe and secure childhood. Our general level of trust in people can also be damaged in adulthood, if we suffer painful relationships, or are let down by others. On top of this, social trust is also under threat in the fast-moving society we live in. For instance, for many people, the use of misinformation and the bending of the truth has eroded trust in politicians and the media.

For tens of thousands of years, our ancestors evolved in small social groups, where everyone saw each other as relatively equal, in a trusted and supportive community. Although this sounds idealistic, this is backed up by anthropologists studying hunter-gatherer tribes today, who found many interesting behaviours that we could learn from. Being dependent on each other, they tend not to tolerate attempts to appear better than others or to dominate the group.

We now live in much larger and more complex societies. In a big city, we’re often surrounded by complete strangers, whom we’ve never met and are unlikely to ever see again, which would cause our ancestors enormous stress. So, it’s no surprise that people in cities tend to filter-out the built-in need for social connection, almost seeing other people as cardboard cut-outs.

With mindful awareness, we can override this tendency by being more conscious of social trust and actively trusting most people we meet. Of course, this means being wise and skilful, rather than naïve. Using open awareness and kindness, we can see other people as being just like us, with joys, challenges, and a complex inner life just like our own. You can practise this while commuting and at work. For instance, say you’re introduced to new people in a meeting at work, notice if you begin not trusting people you don’t already know as a default behaviour. If you discover that you’re not automatically trusting someone at work, it could be that there’s something about the way they come across, or that you’re projecting a lack of trust onto them; if this is the former, you may be right not to trust them. If the latter, it’s likely that you work in an environment where trust has been eroded, which is common in organisations that have an endemic blame culture.

There’s also an individual level of trust, in ourselves. Every day we trust that our bodies function properly; we trust our breath and heartbeat, our lungs extract oxygen, neurons fire, gut bacteria work away, cells are replenished, and we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. It’s not that we have a choice, but we put our faith and trust in all these wonderful things.

Also, rather than sometimes looking outside for guidance, we can also trust that we have the right inner resources, knowledge and experience, insights, and intuition; trusting that if we are aware, calm, and alert, we’ll respond skilfully to whatever arises in our experience.

Practising mindfulness means taking responsibility for being our authentic selves, learning to listen to and trust our inner responses. And as we cultivate trust within ourselves, we’ll find it easier to trust other people, appreciating the basic goodness in everyone.

Suggested weekly practice

Appreciating the trust that we have in other people who help us daily.
Trusting in our own insight and intuition of what we observe in awareness.
Bringing openness and kindness to others as we realise that they have a complex inner life just like our own.

Guidance

Find somewhere undisturbed and sit in a comfortable, dignified, and upright posture, where you can remain alert and aware.
There are two guided practices for this session. You can close your eyes, or lower your gaze while the meditations play.

Play the first settling practice, then read through the session content, which you can print off if that helps.
Then play the second practice to explore trusting others as well as yourself.

Performance

Although many of the benefits of mindfulness are about improving health and well-being, the practice can also have a positive impact on our performance, both professionally and in our personal lives. Mindfulness is used to improve performance in education, the workplace, the military, the arts, and professional sports, which is a great example to explore. Sports psychologists and coaches have come to really value the benefits of mindfulness to improve performance in professional sports like tennis and athletics.

Forms of mindfulness have been around for some time in professional sport. Back in 1974, Tim Gallwey’s best-selling book The Inner Game of Tennis outlined a set of techniques that sports professionals use today. One idea in the book is that we have a self-one and a self-two. The first self is the inner commentary that criticises a faulty shot or poor performance. The second self, referred to as the subconscious mind in the book, is the body that’s hitting the ball. One principle of the Inner Game is to allow the body to get on with the job, free from the nagging remarks of the mind. Gallwey’s formula is that performance equals potential minus interference, where interference is the negative and depleting thoughts and emotions. This is like the distinction between the foreground content of consciousness, for instance, thoughts and emotions, and background conscious awareness, the open and aware space that thoughts and emotions flow through. The Inner Game is about practising focused awareness in a state of relaxed concentration, without judgement or self-criticism. Interestingly, Tim Gallwey went on to publish many other books around the same theme, as well as successfully coaching organisations like AT&T, Apple, and IBM in using the techniques and he is still active today.

In the world of work, the potential performance benefits of mindfulness include improved focus, mental clarity, reduced stress and anxiety and improved relationships. These can make a difference right across the organisation, from the boardroom to front-line staff.

Practising mindfulness helps settle mental and emotional agitation and reduce unhelpful habit patterns. Both can be viewed as a form of interference in our performance. With agitation, we’re tangled up in the content of thoughts and emotions, which we can let go of and release through intentional practise. Most of us are not conscious of the limiting habit patterns as they tend to be in our blind spots. We can start to reduce these by observing and gaining insights when we notice them operating. We can also use mindfulness to improve our relationships, by bringing openness, kindness and compassion and really paying attention to other people through mindful listening.

Tips for using mindfulness for improving our performance at work include:

Taking regular breaks away from screens to check in with ourselves; seeing what feelings and emotions are around, whether our mind is settled or agitated, and taking some intentional breaths while relaxing and releasing any tension.
Keeping grounded, open, and alert in meetings by bringing our attention and awareness to our body and senses.
Working with emotions as they arise, by using the awareness of the changing sensations, like tightening in the body as an early warning.

We all strive to be happy, successful and fulfilled in our professional as well as our personal lives. We can go through years of education yet may have never been taught what it means to be human, with an amazing mind, heartfelt emotions, a miraculous body, and wonderful senses. Mindfulness helps us improve our attention and awareness, so we can reach higher levels of performance and respond skilfully to whatever arises in the present moment.

Play the first settling practice, then read the session content, which you can print off if that helps
Then play the second audio to explore performance

Vulnerability

Although politicians, strategists, and special advisors do their best to control things like the economy, health, geopolitical relations, and the environment, the world appears to be more chaotic, complex, and uncertain for them to ever get things right, for very long. The same is true on a personal level; although we do our best to control our lives, there are many things in life that we cannot control. For instance, we get older, may experience illness, and all of us will eventually die. We may experience moments of self-doubt, helplessness, worry, restlessness, confusion, defensive reaction, and limitation. All of these are moments of vulnerability.

Vulnerability is about the possibility of being exposed to attack or harm. In the case of our wellbeing, vulnerability relates to our body, emotions, mind, our sense of self, and relationships. Vulnerabilities can come from external conditions, as well as from within ourselves and how we relate to the world. The negativity bias in the primitive part of our brain evolved to keep our early ancestors safe from danger. Although still useful, it’s this bias that makes us give greater cognitive and emotional prominence to unpleasant and negative perceptions and experiences than ones that are pleasant. Rather than living with ease, we sometimes find ourselves caught up in difficulties and challenges that we react to with the same habit patterns that no longer serve us. We may feel anxiety and get caught up in worrying thoughts about what could happen, as well as reacting defensively with anger driving thoughts about who is to blame. All of this leads to a state of agitation and stress that reduces our capacity to think clearly and respond skilfully. Alternatively, we may deny that we are feeling vulnerable at all and avoid the thoughts and emotions about a difficulty.

There is a range of mindfulness skills and attitudes that can help us work more skilfully with vulnerability:

We can be open and aware of what is going on for us within the present moment
We can use courage and curiosity to investigate what is going on for us with kindness and self-compassion
We can focus on our breath to slow things down, reduce agitation, cultivate some space, and collect our thoughts
With a less busy mind, we can step out of the internal narrative and identification, and find the internal space to explore choices and options for how we can respond more skilfully
We can make sure we include a bit of joy, gratitude, and appreciation in our lives, even when things are difficult
We can notice the negativity bias as well as being aware of old habit patterns that no longer serve us

One way of being more alert to vulnerabilities is to watch out for moments when there is the impulse to make this moment different in some way. For example, this could be by distracting ourselves with the TV or with our phone, rather than exploring and moving towards what is making us feel vulnerable in that moment. This is not to say that watching TV or looking at our phone is not a wholesome activity, it’s when we find ourselves doing this on impulse to make ourselves feel better that indicates that it may be more useful to acknowledge and explore a feeling of vulnerability that’s in the background of our experience.

Anyone who watches the news cannot help feeling a bit troubled about what is happening in the world, which makes us feel vulnerable collectively, as well as personally. Many of us also experience difficulties and challenges closer to home that we do our best to resolve. Having the courage to be more aware of our vulnerabilities, noticing unhelpful habit patterns, calming agitation, and restlessness, finding joy, practising acceptance and patience, and bringing openness, kindness, and compassion to ourselves leads to a more easeful life, improves our emotional resilience and gives us the capacity to help others.

Suggested weekly practices

Check-in with yourself during the day to be more aware of any vulnerable feelings and thoughts
Notice old habit patterns, especially the impulse to avoid or react defensively to feelings of vulnerability
See if you can bring a bit of joy, appreciation, and gratitude into each day, even when you may be feeling overwhelmed, low, or frustrated. For instance, this could be spending a bit of peaceful and appreciative time in nature, looking up at the sunset for a few moments, or taking a dog for a walk in the woods.

Guidance

Play the first settling practice, then read through the session content, which you can print off if that helps.
Then play the second practice to explore where we experience vulnerability and to begin to cultivate the conditions where we are less likely to react with defensive habit patterns that no longer serve us.