7 Surprising Attributes of Patient People 

Do you think of yourself as a patient person?  Do others give you feedback about your patience, or lack thereof?

This might look like a friend making a casual comment like, "As if you'd wait in line!" Or, your family might laugh when you tell them that you're patient.  

Family is good like that, sort of a built-in polishing of the stone.  There's no flaw that doesn't go unnoticed.  

My family has been telling me for years that I'm not very patient.  I wore it around my neck as an odd badge of honor.  You see, my father is not very patient and I just figured that was how it was supposed to be as a "St. Pierre man".  Add in the cultural myth that leaders are classically impatient and there I was- impatient as all get out.

Something inside me told me that this might not be a good thing after all.  What if patience was actually better than impatience?  What kinds of opportunities might open up if I could become more patient?

I chose Lent as the time of year to begin to study this further.  During a chat with a local priest, he asked me which one thing I could do to show God that I was more grateful.  It immediately came to me- I had to work on my patience.   

Since then, just before Easter, I've done just that. It's been work to flex my patience muscle and pause my impatience enough to grow and learn. I've realized that I was pretty much a zero in the patience department. 

It didn't feel good.  Something needed to change. 

After a few months, here's what I've found about learning to be more patient:

  1. Listening is part of patience.  To the degree that you can look someone in the eye and not just be waiting to say something is an act of patience.
  2. In between-spaces are part of patience.  Think of line waiting, etc.  
  3. Silence is part of patience.  How hard is silence for you?  For many people, it's terrifying.  Just closing your eyes, listening and doing nothing... this is an aspect of patience.  You're just "there".  For me, as a person of faith, this is integrated into my daily time of prayer.  
  4. Daydreaming is part of patience.  When was the last time you looked out a window and let your mind daydream?  Patient people, I've learned, enjoy a good daydream from time to time.  They're not in a rush to get to the next thing.
  5. Humility is part of patience.  To put someone else above yourself is an act of humility.  Thomas Merton, the Catholic Trappist monk, once said that the simple act of reading is a gesture of humility.  Just as it takes patience to read, it takes humility to be patient.
  6. Focus is part of patience.  A patient person can focus on thing at a time, whether it's a work task or a conversation.
  7. Contentment is part of patience.  If you can be happy doing one thing at a time, you're flexing your patience muscle.  

Patience is a rare virtue.  Our workplaces expect a lot out of us and bosses are typically impatient. As high performers, we demand a lot out of ourselves, always pushing towards excellence.

Through it all, we would do well to practice patience, with ourselves, with one another and with our work. 

One Clever Way to Chart Your Personal Growth

Productivity expert Carson Tate uses a wonderful tool to categorize folks according to their personal style of working.  

The Arranger

The Planner

The Visualizer

The Prioritizer

You can take the test here.  The book is even better as each chapter lets you just zoom in on the strategies that match your particular style.  As an avid book scanner, it was nice to be able to breeze through each chapter, not feeling guilty about it.

I'm a Planner first and a Visualizer second. My wife is an Arranger to the max.

Typically, when you take any assessment like Tate's (or Disc or Myers Briggs, etc.) it just gets filed and you move on.  I decided to do something different this time around.  I wanted to savor the assessment and link it to other measurements like Disc, Meyers Briggs and Enneagram.  

What if I could design a personal growth "tool" of sorts?  And, what if I could make it look nice?

The latter part was important to me.  Yes, I've written (in the past) my goals and posted them on my office wall.  Yes, it's worked.  What didn't work was the utilitarian vibe- I needed something stylish, something with some class.  

Enter Canva.com.  

I use Canva daily (yes, daily) for reports, flyers, brochures, social media graphics and anything else in between.  It's nearly free and makes even the most basic designer look like a pro.  What if I could take my productivity style, along with a few other growth metrics, and create something out of it for my office?  Using Canva, I finally could.

Step two was to find a template in Canva that matched my office's aesthetic.  I chose a "resume" design- very simple and easy to manipulate.

Step three became more difficult as I had to limit the information to one page. The temptation in these things is to make it complicated.  Not this time, I told myself...

The final product included the following:  

  • Mission statement
  • Productivity style
  • Myers Briggs indicator
  • Disc rating
  • Enneagram rating
  • Quarterly goals
  • Spiritual growth target
  • Audacious career goal

Here's what the final product looks like in my office:

IMG_1149.PNG

The value of this process was twofold.  First, it memorialized what I'm working on right now.  Second, it made personal growth much more than just a few ideas on a scrap of paper.  When you make something look nice, it gives it dignity and a proper place.  

Think- Baron Fig notebook as opposed to a cheap $1 version.

You can do this too.  It's that easy.  I've created a template for you to use for yourself.  It will save you about 15 minutes.  If you're familiar with Canva and want to do it on your own, that's ok too.  

Here's the download:

Free Personal Growth Template

Get your copy of the personal growth template.

Don't worry- we don't share your information with anyone. Powered by ConvertKit

 

The real question is this: how are you capturing and honoring your own growth goals?  

How Morning Quiet Time Led me to a Career Change

One bottle of wine.  A lovely framed picture.  Some wonderful toasts from people I care deeply about.  These were the mementos of a going away party from the faculty I've served for the past seven years.

 

I had told them several weeks prior that I would be leaving school in order to become the Executive Director of a national, Catholic organization.  We laughed, cried and hugged one another good bye.  Some food and wine didn't hurt.  Very special moments that I will cherish.

 

Coming this July, I'll be leaving the comforts of K-12 education and entering the new world of higher education.  What led me to this point is very simple: I needed a change.  I couldn't put my finger on it but there was something inside me that was part restless and part antsy. 

 

What about you?  How do you know when you're ready to make a move?

 

For me, it was rooted in my prayer life. As someone who craves the quiet of early mornings (although I hate waking up!), years of mornings cultivated an awareness in me that I was not only ready to make a change but that God was calling me to do so. 

 

This was of course, a scary realization.  As a head of a secondary school, I've been so blessed and I am so thankful for what my school has given to me and my family.  Nothing but gratitude...

 

Still, I was willing to trust God and step out of my comfort zone. 

 

Interestingly, I've had no less than five adults come to me in the past few months looking for guidance in their own careers.  They are exactly where I was.  The inner voice was stirring and they weren't ready to get fully out of the boat but did want to dip their foot in to the water.  I realized that I was not alone, that many others were also considering career moves.

 

This is normal, healthy and good.  The old paradigm of staying in one company for your entire career is dead.  Now, there is a new ninja skill to be nurtured by professionals- paying attention to your spirit.

 

The key to all of this is listening- to what gives you joy, to the rhythms of your day, to the activities that you're really good at.  Listen to your strengths and look for careers that play to those assets.  Listen to those "wisdom people" close to you who can speak guidance into your life.  Ask yourself the tough questions that matter.

 

I suppose when you look at it this way, listening is a tactical career skill.  Who knew that some quiet time in the morning, day after day, would reveal such an insight to me and probably to countless others?