“Patience is the companion of wisdom” - Gautama Buddha

Do You Have a Short Fuse?

Effective Ways to Develop Patience and Tolerance Life's stressors and issues can surely trigger development of impatience and intolerance in anyone. Have you found that you're becoming more impatient with those around you?

Would you consider yourself as someone with a short fuse? Do you get upset over the slightest of things?

If you answered "yes" to any of the questions above, it's time to work on identifying techniques to tackle your disposition to impatience. There's definitely nothing good that can come out of giving off that negative energy!

Here's Your Starting Point

Using these tips can give you a jump-start in effectively dealing with your short fuse:

1. Identify the source.

One of the crucial elements in developing a plan to tackle impatience and intolerance is to identify just what gets you in that state. Once you've been able to pinpoint that, answer the following questions:

• Why does it make you impatient or why are you intolerant in such an instance?

• Is there an alternate response you could give as opposed to impatience or intolerance?

• Could the outcome be more positive if you avoid that source altogether?

2. Be conscious of your responses and reactions.

This is perhaps one of the most important steps to correcting how you deal with issues that cause you to lose patience. The more often you stop and acknowledge your flare up, the sooner you'll be able to grab hold of it before things get out of hand.

3. Count to ten.

As simple as this seems, it's definitely very effective. Counting to ten gives you the opportunity to rethink your response. What you'll find is that giving yourself a chance to "cool down" before responding will result in a more favorable outcome for you and any other party involved.

4. Recognize the impact on you.

A firm bit of advice would be to stop and consider how your actions and reactions are affecting you. Impatience and intolerance often lead to issues with health, such as high blood pressure. Becoming conscious of what you could be doing to your body will help you fight the urge to respond negatively.

5. Recognize the impact on others.

Apart from creating a stressful scenario for others that could possibly lead to health complications, have you ever thought about the emotional effects? Impatience and intolerance can lead you to make degrading, humiliating statements that could severely traumatize others.

• Spend time contemplating the possible effects your actions have on others.

• Ask those around you how they feel when you display impatience and intolerance.

6. Meditate.

Meditation can lead to a newfound calmness that could impact how you respond to the actions of others or challenges that typically cause you to lose patience. Introducing meditation to your daily routine will surely have positive effects.

• Listen to daily inspirational audio recordings that you can meditate on during the course of each day.

• Engage in deep meditation once a week while at home.

• Introduce soothing melodies and songs to your work and home environment that can change the mood in the air and subsequently impact you in a positive way.

Instinctively, you'll want to display the negative responses you're accustomed to displaying because it's much easier than trying to contain them. It's certainly an easier road to walk on, however, it is certainly not the most positive or beneficial road!

Reach deep within and find the urge and sincere desire to change how you respond to things that normally irritate you. Give yourself grace and space to learn positive approaches one day at a time.

You'll be glad you did!