Copyright © 2022 Lee Spirit 

It’s been one of those weeks where I haven’t had much patience and tolerance for all the noises around me! My upstairs neighbours have been bothering me ever since they moved in last Spring with a constant stomp-fest. If it’s not that, it’s loud hooting and hollering, or chasing the cat around after midnight. Sounds like the Calgary Stampede up there! So different than climbing this peaceful mountain out in nature! Being the witness of my own reactions, I’ve concluded that I’m not as peaceful and zen as I thought I was! Developing patience and tolerance with kindness and love can certainly be challenging. Here are a few tips to get you started…

Developing Patience By Identifying What Makes You Impatient

The first step to developing patience and tolerance is to identify what’s bothering you. For me, it’s mostly noise. If it’s not neighbours, it’s construction noise, power sawing, leaf blowers, machinery, or people chatting too much in the workplace.

What Is Bothering You?

What bugs you and makes you impatient? For many, it might be slow traffic. I often hear the expression, “I have no tolerance for ‘stupid’ people”. As long as you identify what it is that gets on your nerves, it’s a good starting point to developing your patience and tolerance. You can’t get beyond something if you are unconscious about what it is that frustrates you. It’s not very helpful to run around in a snit about everything without knowing what you’re in a snit about!

Why Is It Bothering You?

Then ask yourself, “Why does this bother me?” For me, the noise issues are a lot to do with needing my sleep, and wondering how people could be so inconsiderate of others. Maybe at my age, and with my attempts to be zen and peaceful though yoga and meditation, the power sawing is simply too hard on my relaxed brain. Perhaps silent meditation and yoga have given me a heightened sensitivity to sound.

When we figure out the what and the why, we can then begin to come up with solutions for developing patience and tolerance with kindness, compassion, and love towards ourselves and others. I have to keep in mind, for instance, that my neighbours upstairs are probably 20 years younger than me!

Where Does Impatience Come From?

We are not born with impatience. It has to originate from somewhere. We learn impatience when we get instant gratification for things. If you always get what you want when you want it, then suddenly don’t, you may feel agitated! It’s so easy to order things online and get them instantly. Messenger allows us to send instant messages to loved ones, and you hear back from them right away. So when you have to wait to get something, or wait to hear back from someone, all of the sudden, you feel impatient!

Impatience is like stress, and the more we have of it, the less functional, healthy and happy we are. Click Here To Build Patience, Faith, and Trust.

Developing Tolerance

Not only is it easy to become impatient when we’re used to instant gratification, but intolerance and impatience are peas of the same pod. Tolerance is our ability to put up with something we don’t particularly like. I’m pretty intolerant of of any kind of noise, but maybe you are intolerant of someone else’s behaviour or opinions.

Plant the Seeds and Wait For Your Garden To Grow

Developing patience and tolerance is like planting seeds and waiting for our gardens to grow. The flowers don’t bloom instantly, we have to be patient for their arrival. When the tiny seeds of pure potential are ready to blossom, they will do so. Just like those tiny seeds, we are seeds of pure potential, and we can cultivate patience and tolerance just by observing nature.

Be the Witness of Your Reactions

When we learn to observe and tolerate the processes of growth, healing, recovery, or addiction, we will be kinder and more compassionate towards ourselves and others. We can start developing patience and tolerance by being the witness of our own reactions.

How Did I React Instead of Responding Calmly?

My immediate reaction to the noise upstairs is, “GRRRR!”, and many other swear curses and expletives. I actually want to get up and bang on the ceiling and see how they like it, and have all sorts of unkind thoughts! I turn into a bit of a monster – Yes, this kind, calm, zen, and peaceful Lee Spirit suddenly becomes angry, irritable, negative, grouchy, and wants to take it all out on them in a nasty note!

What Did I Witness About Myself?

Then I sit back and observe myself…I write my nasty note, and read it over to make sure I don’t sound too bitchy. Unfortunately, I notice that I do! I had already spoken to this couple a few months after they moved in about the noise, and they kindly said they’d try to find quieter ways to play with their cat, and gave me their text number in case I have any issues. Seemed reasonable, but since then, nothing has changed. They haven’t found quieter ways to play with their cat, and still stomp around until 1AM keeping me awake at night.

As the witness of myself, I can see that while I like to think of myself as being a ray of light in the world, I have this angry, impatient, intolerant inner child who wants to lash out at them. I don’t even want to knock on their door because I don’t feel I can communicate calmly or maintain a nice composure about it! Is this really who I am at the core? Yikes!

Using Conscious Communication

So back in December, I decided to text them for the first time since they left me their number in August. I wrote this long paragraph explaining why I needed my sleep after 10pm. I didn’t receive any response to it, and none of their behaviour changed. So this week, I wrote another angrier text to which I got an immediate response…

Notice Your Own Reaction, and Then How Others React Too

That response was something along the lines of, “I don’t know who the $%#@ you are. I didn’t talk to you in August. $&%* off and don’t message me. And I live in a house!”. Yikes!

Did I really sound angry in my text to deserve such a harsh reaction from someone who apparently wasn’t my upstairs neighbours?? Was I so angry that I made a typo in entering their number, or were they pretending it wasn’t them so I’d leave them alone?

I double checked the number, and in fact, I did make a typo! So my neighbours haven’t heard from me since August, and someone out there who isn’t my neighbours is a little uptight and reactive! I mean, “I’m sorry you must have the wrong number” would have been my response to a stranger!

Get a Better Perspective On Your Own Communication

This further allowed me to be the witness of my own communication and how it affects others. Perhaps I came across a little bitchy, and deserved this uptight and angry response!

Choosing Compassion, Kindness, Tolerance, and Forgiveness

My compassion came through in this moment, for the person suffering in their own life so much that they had to treat a stranger in such a way!

This led to compassion for myself for not triple-checking the number before sending it. I thought I was careful, but I must have been too hasty in my anger.

Feeling compassion for myself for being a little harsh in my communication style, I acknowledged that perhaps I should be more careful with my words should I decide to write another note or text.

Finally, I forgave myself for my own reaction, and that on a certain level, I must be suffering in some way, just like the unknown stranger who told me to F-off.

Working on compassionate communication is essential to developing patience and tolerance towards others. How would I want someone to speak to me? Do my words reflect that?

In this case, I realized that perhaps it was a blessing in disguise that I typed the wrong number. It has given me a chance to reflect on my reactions, my communication style, and how I would like to be treated by others.

Steps You Can Take Now For Kindness and Compassion

Deep Breaths

If you want to respond with kindness and compassion rather than reacting in anger, then you need to take a few deep breaths. Sometimes taking a few steps back from the situation and breathing deeply can return you quickly to your meditative, zen state.

Take some time not only to breathe, but to notice how you are breathing. Are you breathing deeply into the belly and chest, or is your breath tight, shallow, or constricted? This will give you a clue as to where you feel stress and need to loosen up a bit.

Notice the Sensations in the Body

When you’re being aware of your breath, also take note of what you feel in your body. Paying attention to the sensations in your body are important clues about how you are really feeling. This will allow you to reassess the situation and see if you really want to write that angry note, or if you want rephrase something, using more compassionate communication. Maybe you’ll decide to take no action at all, as I have done for now! These little pauses are sometimes great blessings!

A Consistent Meditation and Yoga Practice

I’ve been practising a lot of yoga and meditation, especially during this pandemic. So you’d think I’d be able to respond rather than react to my neighbours! What this tells me is that I need to practice more and more. Then, when faced with these situations, I can more easily get back into my zen state of neutrality where things don’t affect me as much.

Since I consider myself a regular yogi, I’m familiar with the Sanskrit term, “ahimsa”. It translates to non-violence, or non-harm – Showing compassion towards ourselves and others. This is something I may need to keep in mind as I react to my neighbours!

I laughed in delight when my yoga teacher said, “You have to be an ascended master to stay zen through power tools!” The same goes for anything else that makes us feel impatient and intolerant. It takes practice, and a whole lot of patience and time.

There are so many things going on in life that it’s hard to find time to meditate and practice yoga. We must though, if we hope to better handle situations that irritate and annoy us. Then we can also handle life’s more difficult challenges.

Climbing the Mountain Takes Patience and Tolerance

Climbing a mountain, which I often do, requires a lot of patience and tolerance for challenging conditions, and elevation gain and loss. That’s why I posted this photo of a hike I did to great heights. I didn’t just one day decide to climb mountains. It has taken years of practice, and patience in reaching my fitness goals. Developing tolerance of pain, difficulties, and challenges in the elements is crucial. Climbing a mountain is a good way to practice patience and tolerance, and it’s very healthy and enjoyable once you build up the fitness for it. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s worth the consistent effort over time.

Other Ways To Practice Patience, Tolerance, Kindness, and Compassion

If you don’t want to start with meditation and yoga, why not just practice being patient in your daily routines? Give these a go…

• Try driving slowly behind that slow car in traffic, and notice how you still get to work at the same time.
• Let someone go ahead of you in line, and notice how they respond with appreciation.
• Decide to tolerate the chatter at work that drives you nuts and see if you can find a way to tune it out.
• Try a random act of kindness, or offer a compassionate word to someone.
• Empathize with others about what they might be going through in their own lives.

Sound Healing & Guided Meditation For Patience and Tolerance

If you’ve been following my website and emails, you’ll notice that many of the products I promote and sell on my site have to do with some sort of sound healing. I’m currently working on using binaural beats and solfeggio tones to reset my brain at sleep time so that my neighbours don’t bother me as much. Being proactive here!

If you click the links on the side of my website, you’ll be taken to similar products that can help you sleep, and that reduce stress and anxiety through healing sounds and tones, or guided meditation.

I hope you’ve benefited from these tips on creating more patience and tolerance in your life! If so, click the link, below, to receive my free ‘Natural Mind Healing’ report that will help ease the stress in your life so you can cultivate more patience and tolerance with kindness and love.

Lee Spirit is an avid outdoors adventurer with a love for nature, photography, health & fitness, wellness, and spirituality. She helps those who suffer from anxiety & negative thinking to become healthier in mind-body-spirit. Her own personal journey has led her to the  study and practice of mindfulness, health, wellness, yoga, spirituality, sound healing, meditation, and personal development for over 20 years. Get mindfulness, meditation, and personal development tips in her Free Natural Mind Healing Report.