Be Patient with Yourself

Whether you’re a student, a parent, have a job, have a pet, are standing in a queue at the grocery store or writing the most important exam of your life, you’re going to need some degree of patience. Patience is something many of us lack in life, and being patient with yourself can be even less common. Arguably, being patient with yourself is the most important form of patience, the patience base on which to build all other patience structures. Even before the world was turned upside down by a pandemic, patience was an invaluable thing to practice, and it just gets more important with every passing year.

Now, you might be thinking that this is quite an obvious and common bit of information, but even for those of us who are more mild tempered and generally calm, being patient with ourselves might not even be something we think about. When we were little, our parents taught us how to talk to others; be nice, don’t shout, don’t get angry. There were clear instructions given for how to talk to other people. Yet only rarely are we truly taught how to talk to ourselves. Did anyone say the same rules apply? Don’t shout, be kind, be patient. We don’t normally think about the relationship we have with our own self, or that we even have one at all.

The instincts we have when dealing with others often are not applied to ourselves. Even if we think we're secure and self-confident, we still tend to be quite hard on ourselves. Imagine if your inner self suddenly manifested on the outside, into its own person. Would you continue talking to them and treating them the way you did when they didn't have a face? When they couldn't react or say anything? Or would you suddenly feel like a jerk for forcing them to study for hours without taking a break? For making them stay up all night and then expecting them to concentrate in class, and getting angry when they didn't manage it?

Don't just treat others the way you want to be treated, treat yourself the way you want others to treat you. Don't shout, be kind, be patient with yourself. 

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