Betsy Guerra answers an Instagram question about how to build patience, arguing that patience is a habit, not a fixed personality trait. She links low patience to underlying stress and limited "adaptation energy" (willpower) that depletes through the day, and recommends replenishing that energy via personal practices — music, exercise, meditation, prayer, or other destressing activities — so one can exercise more patience in daily life.
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Thank you for your questions on Instagram and giving us the opportunity to create content that's going to help you become a better version of you. Today's question is, how can I build up patience? Because counting to 10 is not working anymore. I don't know why I think this may be a mom that asked this question. Let me start by saying that patience is not a personality trait. It's not a quality that you either have or don't have. It's a habit. It's something that you're exercising on a daily basis. And like every habit, you have the power and ability to change it. Usually when we have a hard time exercising patience, it's not because we don't have that quality, but rather because there's something underlying that is causing irritability or stress in our lives, and hence we have less tolerance for. For the things that happen on a daily basis or for when our kids are driving us crazy. Now, let me explain something that I think we don't have. Clarity with willpower, or as Emily Fletcher calls it, adaptation energy, is our ability to deal effectively and in a healthy manner with unmet expectations or the daily demands that we have. You don't have the same willpower in the morning that you have in the evening. You don't have the same patience in the morning that you have in the evening, because it wears off as you keep on implementing and exercising it during the day. So if we do something to replenish our adaptation energy so that we always have our bucket full, we're going to naturally be more patient and tolerant with all the unmet expectations that are gonna arise on a daily basis or all the demands that we're gonna have at work, at home, and in our community. And the way to do that is. I mean, there's tons of way to replenish your adaptation energy. But because you most likely live a crazy life and you're always running up and down and making things happen, you may not be taking the time to replenish that. And then you're trying to pour out of an empty jar. I mean, I can't mention them all, but there's. We all have different ways of replenishing that. Some people like to do it through music. Other people go for a run. Other people meditate, pray, go to the Blessed Sacrament if you're Catholic, or go to the church and speak to a spiritual director. There's so many things that you could do. But keep in mind that you cannot increase your patience if you're not working on the underlying problem. Which is that you are stressed. So find ways of destressing and you will find yourself exercising a heck of a lot more patience.
