In this post
Four ways to help you calm your impatient farm:
1. Go back to the future.
2. Get some distance.
3. Remember why.
4. Quit everything.
Do you need to calm your farm?
I'm a querulous woman. My baseline patience levels are deficient. It's a shame because I'd planned to be a very calm, pleasant Earth Mother. A non-anxious presence. A safe and welcoming bosom on which my children could rest their heads.
I assumed those skills might come in a package with the children. Three children later, I'm sad to report that they did not.
I get annoyed by small things - slow walkers, messy lounge rooms, sniffing plane passengers - and I spend a fair amount of energy suppressing my irritation throughout the day. I don't like waiting. I don't like delays. I don't like mistakes. I'm kind of a dick.
One thing that has helped me to put some of my inner rage-head to bed is digging into my strategy toolbox. If you're not a patient person by nature either, and you'd like some helpful tips for how to calm down a little easier, read on.
Strategy skills to help you calm down
Nothing matters as much as you think - not in the long run.
Don't believe me? Take a look at your calendar or to-do list from three months ago. Scroll through some of your messages from a year ago with your best mate.
The stuff that kept you awake at night, had you put in extra hours, or agonise over the right choice doesn't seem such a big deal now. Nothing would have changed if you hadn't done a third of it.
Now, think about some of the hardest things you've coped with. Odds are, it all worked out all right. You probably refer to those things and appreciate how you changed, grew, or learned.
When you look back, you've got a long-game lens. It's like a wide-angle setting for your brain. When the long game lens is on, you see how individual choices, events, and upsets fit into the bigger picture and work those into your narrative.
For the patience-challenged, fitting a long-game lens is a smart and sensible way to pull yourself out of daily frustrations.
Here are four useful reflective practices to channel a broader perspective:
1. Go back to the future
We're good at seeing how all the pieces fit together when we look into the past (' It was hard, but I'm glad it happened because…') and into the future too (' Sacrifice now will pay off in the future') but we struggle to do it for the present.
When we bring a long-game perspective into the present, we see options, choices and daily events differently. We ask questions like:
- "Does this take me closer to the end goal?"
- "How will I talk about this in a year?"
- "Is this the best use of my time?"
- "What consequences will this have?"
2. Get some distance from your worries
The main reason things seem like such a big deal is because we're too close to them. Daniel Kahneman calls this WYSIATI ('What You See Is All There Is'), but wise people have told us this for ages. You've probably said, "You can't see the wood for the trees" at some point.
The closer you are to something, the more critical it seems.
Our brains are wired to put immediate threats first, which makes sense. We react quickly to the threats in front of us to stay alive. This is great when we're staring down a woolly mammoth but not so helpful when we turn into reactive drama queens panicking at every new email or deadline.
Given that we're so good at putting things into perspective in retrospect, it can be helpful to play Future You when everything seems unmanageable.
Try thinking about your life as a book and this disaster or phase as an event or a chapter. How would it fit into the broader story of what came before and what came next? What would this chapter be called?
3. Remember why you care
Our experiences seem factual because they're tangible. If you can see, smell, hear or taste something, it must be real… right? Wrong. Our external world isn't as objective as it seems. Most of what we experience is just a projection of our shit.
Like Google, our mind runs on a series of filters, helpfully sorting through the tonne of sensory information available to present us with relevant results. This is great if you're a good Googler and use the proper search criteria. But if your criteria are unhelpful - or worse, if they're unclear, the sorting function doesn't work. Some things seem more important than they are, while the most critical stuff falls by the wayside.
It's hard to see things for what they are if you don't know who you are or what you care about. That's why perspective doesn't work without purpose. We must use our values to define a more helpful filter for our search results.
Greg McKeown calls this your 'highest point of contribution.' Simon Sinek calls it your 'why.' Mindfulness teachers talk about your 'calling.' Call it what you like. The minutiae don't seem so relevant when you've got your eye on something more significant.
Who cares if someone cut you off on the motorway or Ben in Accounting took the wrong tone in his email when you're focused on building something important?
Your life will always fill up with stuff, because you secretly want it to. We avoid boredom because we'd have to face the truth about our super-important work and life things and wonder… "Is this all bullshit?" "what am I even doing this for?" And those are scary questions.
Take the time to understand what you value and the impact you want to have on the world. It's scary but worthwhile. People motivated by a strong sense of purpose tend to live more meaningful lives, have more satisfying relationships and do better at work. These are nice things to have.
4. Make tough decisions that put you in alignment
Knowing your purpose isn't enough. In fact, knowing what matters to you and not living in alignment with that will make you miserable. To bring genuine peace and calm to your life, consider this question:
What if it isn't the mess, the noise, or the delays that upsets you? What if it's a deeper sense of unease? Do you know you're out of alignment, but that's too tricky to handle, so you're projecting that feeling onto other things around you?
Maybe you're living in a way that doesn't feel quite right, and you know it, but you're trying to avoid it. You're avoiding it because you have a boss or clients to answer to, people to look after, parents to please, a mortgage to pay, or other obligations, and you've filed yourself under 'stuck, whether you like it or not.'
Because that will definitely leave you irritable and impatient.
Everyone knows the guy who talks the big game about what they will do 'one day.' One day, they'll write a book. One day, they'll start their own business. One day, they'll run a marathon. Maybe you are that guy. But one day will come, and if you didn't write anything, launch anything, or pick up a running habit, the odds are against you.
In this way, the long game is a paradox. On one hand, nothing matters very much. On the other... everything does.
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
– Annie Dillard
If this is you, here's a big hug: you've done the right thing for everyone for a long time, and that's awesome. Proud of you. It's time for you to bring some of your stuff in now, before you become an insufferable asshole.
If you want to keep a healthy perspective and stop losing your shit over minor things in the present, do more of what lights you up and points toward a future. Write that book, build that website, go to that class and take small steps to bring sustainability into your workplace.
Do less of what gets in the way, and when something pisses you off, push it through your 'What I Genuinely Care About' filter.
Ask questions like:
- "Is this worth my energy?"
- "Does investing my time here take me closer to my long game?"
- "What should I focus on instead?"
- "How do I get rid of this from my life"?"
- "Can I just let this go?"
Or even better, blow everything up and start again.
It's almost a new year, and how bad could it be?
A
Alicia McKay
