Patience is very important. For example, when we are on Facebook or watching TV –sometimes we do so many completely useless things, which are basically brainwashing us – but somehow, we are then very patient. Why? We are wasting our time, but we are super-patient. However, many times when we are not wasting our time, when we are actually doing something, we have a challenge, we lose patience so easily. Why is this? It is important to check and observe.

The other day someone told me a very funny story about a woman and a child in a supermarket. The mother took her daughter to the supermarket and the daughter immediately saw chocolate and she screamed, “Ah! I want chocolate, I want chocolate!” and the mother said, “No, no, no.” Then after a while she saw some biscuits and she said, “I want biscuits!” She started a tantrum and then afterwards she saw some candies, so she started grabbing all the candies and putting them into the basket and shouting, “I want candies!”

The mother said, “No, sorry we are going to go home and take a shower. We are going to cook dinner and then we are going to have dinner.” She very patiently said, “No, Caroline, we are going to go home. We are going to take a shower. We are going to have dinner.” Slowly she took out the candies and she put everything back again while the girl was going completely crazy. Someone who was in the supermarket came to the mother and said, “Wow, I really admire you. You are so patient with your daughter Caroline.” The mother said, “Sorry, no, I am Caroline and my daughter’s name is Eleanor.” That is a good example of having patience with yourself.  The mother was talking to herself not to the daughter.

Patience is very, very important, starting with oneself. But patience is not only now, something temporary, it is also long-term. If you have a challenge, if you want to achieve something, if you want to be dedicated, then you also have to have patience. Because we are creatures of habit, we can’t change just like that, with a snap of our fingers. We have to take baby steps slowly, slowly, slowly. So it is good to slowly create the habit, the pattern, in the mind first. Slowly, then you can start doing it and talking about it.

The important thing is to recognize the patterns in the mind. When it is negative you cut, you stop, and then you switch to something positive. One of the main issues on the planet today, because there are so many problems, is that we overvalue negativity more than positivity. If we actually overvalue positiveness much more and we don’t give so much importance to negativity then what we actually will have is positiveness. But it is important also to observe the negativity in order to learn, to know what you don’t want and to know what you do want. So learn from your mistakes. You can make some mistakes, but don’t repeat the same, same, same mistake all the time. Then you don’t evolve.

Extracted from Adapting Positively to Any Circumstance, a talk Ösel gave at Institut Vajra Yogini in the south of France.

Source: Lamayeshe.com