Patience and Dealing with Life’s Frustration

Welcome to this months’ Flourish!

I’m thrilled to share that The US Review of Books recommends my new
book, You’re Not Too Old, & It’s Not Too Late and has given it a great review!

https://www.theusreview.com/reviews-1/Youre-Not-Too-Old-and-Its-Not-Too-Late-by-Ilene-Berns-Zare.html

Please click here to learn more and enjoy your copy.  If you like the book, please recommend it to friends. Ilene is available for Chicagoland book readings and signings.

And now, onto this month’s Flourish blog:
You may be familiar with the proverb, “patience is a virtue” offering the idea that calmly waiting and tolerating with minimal frustration is a valuable personal attribute.

Admittedly, patience is sometimes not my strong suit. In some situations, I am quite patient. But at other times my frustration or the adversity of the moment gets the best of me. Frankly, when I’m feeling impatient, the experience can be as uncomfortable for me as the person toward whom my impatience may be directed.

Patience can be defined as a capacity to endure difficulties, frustrations, and suffering with some sense of calm.  Evidence suggests that patience is an important factor for navigating life’s challenges while also contributing to a sense of personal wellbeing and meaning in life (Schnitker & McAnnally-Linz, 2021). 

Patience has not been widely studied by psychologists. Research published in 2024 by Kate Sweeny, PhD, and Sarah Schnitker, PhD, “shows that patient people worry less and feel less negative and more positive emotions when waiting for personally relevant news…”  Sweeny (2025) suggests that impatience is an emotion which is sparked by various types of frustrations and suggests further research to examine new approaches to strengthen patience as a coping strategy to help us manage our frustrations as they arise in our lives.

Schnitker describes three types of patience (2010; Bulbul & Izgar, 2017). These include:

• Everyday life patience, such as waiting for an appointment, sitting in the car during high traffic, and waiting for customer service at a store or on the phone.
• Patience during life challenges, such as illness, childcare, eldercare, or financial difficulties.
• Patience in interpersonal situations, such as difficult conversations, or challenging relationships.

While positive psychologists don’t specifically name patience as one of the top 24 human character strengths, it is seen as an important element of human behavior.  Strengths researchers propose that patience is a combination of several recognized character strengths including perseverance, self-regulation, and judgment (Niemiec, 2018; Peterson and Seligman, 2004).

There are many reasons to leverage greater patience to address everyday frustrations. For example, patience can help you manage your emotions during stressful situations and persevere toward achieving your goals. Patience can

help build relationships and strengthen cooperation among people, including family, friends, colleagues, and in the community.

 These four strategies may help you strengthen your patience:

1. Developing greater awareness of when you are not being or feeling patient. Gently notice what types of experiences tend to provoke impatience for you and how you tend to respond in those situations.
2. Thinking about patience as a growing edge that you can strengthen with intention and practice.
3. Aiming for less judgmental interactions with others. Practice listening to the ideas of others and noticing new ideas and information with an intention to be present with less judgement of good or bad, like or dislike, etc.  Instead, try calmly paying attention and attempting to understand things from alternate perspectives.  Patience does not require agreement, rather it can be about intentionally cultivating perspective, openness to other options, and managing or self-regulating your emotions and reactions.
4. Cultivating a patience practice. You might take a mindful moment to quiet down and offer yourself inner spaciousness to navigate frustration or difficulty.  Gently, turn your attention to your breath or another anchor and invite yourself to let go of whatever is causing your sensations of unrest, discomfort, anger, etc. Then, each time your thoughts wander back to your impatience, you might invite yourself to return to the gentler focus you have chosen. You might kindly say something to yourself acknowledging your experience, such as: This is my experience and that’s OK, or may I be calm and go with the flow.