Patience

I observed many things on my vacation to England, I tried to live in each moment &  I related to a wide variety of people.  Through all of this one of the things that rang very true to me is patience.  How much patience do you have?  Do you have patience for people that are different then you? or do you just dismiss them?  In a storm of activity can you remain calm and move through the storm as a quiet force?

These & many more questions are very difficult for some people to answer.  Let's take it a step further & ask, is your outside appearance the same as how you feel inside?  Patience can be a very difficult thing in this busy time.  I believe it's something we all need to work on especially now.

We talked a lot in the past in this journey to joy about appreciating each moment, patience to me is very interconnected to this.  I have always been thought of as someone who has great patience.  Patience in teaching, patience in listening & patience in waiting, my struggle is that inside I'm not always as patient as I appear on the outside.

I've wrote some about my daughter's wedding, it was an amazing experience to me & something I think every father of a little girl should go through.  The range of emotions that you experience in a short period of time (if you allow them) is amazing.  But, there was a storm of activity.  This storm was complicated by the wide variety of people involved in this wedding, from grandma's fairly set in their ways to my ex-wife to a couple not even invited to the wedding (that's another story) to the few friends of my daughter & son-in-law's friends & to my son-in-laws very British parents.  I enjoyed the differences that each of these people brought to this wonderful event but I found everyone getting caught up in the storm & not truly appreciating what we all were there for.

I was able to move from group to group & bring some calm to each situation that presented its self.  I calmed down people upset at small things beyond their control & brought some calmness to people that were stressed out by everything happening around them.  The point of this blog is not to commend myself because as I mentioned earlier I struggle with what's going on on the inside as opposed to what people see in these situations.  Instead I want to give an example of how life can pass you by if you don't slow down.  This amazing event was a blink in the lifetime of everyone who attended it but many of the people didn't appreciate the experience because they were caught up in the storm.

Patience is letting go of the outcome, enjoying the now & quieting the storm.  To truly have patience you must be open to the differences of the people in your life & accept them from where they are coming from.  All of these traits are part of your expansion into a more joyful life.  So today when the storm begins around you, take a breath & be the calm....your life will change because of it.

Until tomorrow,

Bill

Quote of the day: "Patience is the ability to calm the storm around you & appreciate each & every moment, practice patience today!"