ON THE FRONTLINE

I Want Patience and I Want It Now

By Cindy Campbell

I’VE NEVER BEEN VERY GOOD AT WAITING. Waiting at the doctor’s office, waiting in line at Starbucks, waiting for the car in front of me to GO ALREADY at the green light. I have been the impatience poster child for most of my adult life. This was my reality—until I learned that my impatience could literally bring about my demise.

There’s science behind this statement. Dr. Ahmed Sood with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., has devoted much of his career to researching impatience and the negative effects it can have on our health and happiness. Sood and his colleagues have determined there is a direct correlation between our quality of life and how we react to the variety of stressors we encounter. A few notable findings from his research: ■ Stress is a negative emotion related to impatience. ■ An episode of explosive anger, significant stress, or impatience can increase your risk of heart attack and sudden death by two to eightfold for the next few hours. ■ Impatience, or a lack of patience, can have a long-term effect on your DNA. ■ The only thing that gets faster with impatience is aging.

And finally, consider this impactful quote from Sood: “Impatience is not simply the opposite of patience, rather, the absence of patience brings us anxiety, illness, injury, loneliness—and even death.”

I don’t know about you, but that perspective makes me seriously reconsider my impatient ways.

Trained to be Impatient

The challenge here is that as humans, we’re designed to be impatient from the moment we arrive. Babies instinctively communicate their immediate needs for food and comfort. As we started to grow, most of us were told that patience is a virtue, yet few of us were taught how to actually become more patient. This predisposition for impatient reactions continues throughout our lives—unless we learn to recognize and interrupt it.

Here’s the good news: We have the capability to become more patient, but it takes discipline and lots of practice.

How is this relevant to you as a professional? I’m sharing all of this because the ill effect of impatience can directly affect our level of happiness, both personally and professionally. Is your impatience influencing others in ways you hadn’t considered? If you knew you could choose to feel less stress and improve your health and the quality of your relationships, would you do it? Of course you would. As the saying goes, the first step in solving a problem is recognizing there is one. In this case, I’m suggesting recognition has two components.

1. Recognizing the negative effects of

impatience in your life. The nature of our work often presents us with opportunities to react with impatience. When we’re stressed, irritated, or upset, we tend to be less productive. In addition, our body releases a stress hormone that interferes with our ability to perform simple tasks. Take the concept I started with—waiting. In life, we all encounter the waiting game, but few of us feel at ease when we’re unexpectedly delayed or asked to wait for long periods of time. Waiting can make us feel resentful and anxious, as if others are in control of us. Think about it—this may be what our customers experience as they wait on hold for our assistance. While perception isn’t always reality, I think it’s safe to say that none of us want to feel controlled by others.

The challenge here is that as humans, we’re designed to be impatient from the moment we arrive. Babies instinctively communicate their immediate needs for food and comfort.

We have the ability to make a conscious choice to react to situations we encounter with less anxiety and impatience. Good things can come to us when we realize our reaction is a choice. When we can do this, we’re happier and potentially healthier for it. It takes time to change our threshold for feeling impatience, but statistics show we may live longer—for ourselves and for our loved ones.

2.Recognizing your ability to positively influence the

impatient reactions of others. If we can learn to help ourselves to react with less impatience, we’re better able to handle situations in which others become impatient in their dealings with us. At a minimum, we can be less reactionary to their stress and impatience. Customers often respond with impatience based on their feelings of anxiety. They may perceive they’re being given the runaround or feel like they have no control over an imposed situation. Make it a habit to ease customer anxiety by helping them to better understand what is happening, what options they have, and any related time frames that may apply. It sets a good example for the customer as well as anyone else that may be watching your interaction.

Happiness

A final thought on this: We cannot be impatient and happy at the same time. It takes a conscious decision to not allow ourselves to be pulled into the vortex of anxiety and impatience of those we encounter. Our quality of life can improve when we choose to react with patience.

My two cents? Definitely worth the effort. ◆

CINDY CAMPBELL is IPMI’s senior training and development specialist. She is available for onsite and online training and professional development and can be reached at campbell@parking-mobility.org.

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