Patience: Then And Now

Three years ago I wrote about patience.  That post was Exhibit A in me thinking I was actually, you know, patient.  Turns out I was wrong.  I learned this the hard way.  I suppose the first sign was that I was boasting I was patient.

The past two years have tested my patience more than any other years of my life.  I won’t go into details, but suffice to say that I’ve learned a few things about patience. I’ve yelled more, been angry more, and have been frustrated more than most other times in my life.  In short, I was lying to myself about patience.  So I thought I’d go back and see what I wrote back then, and what I think my mistakes were.

Then:  Does patience means sucking it up?  I wrote:  “Replying to a hostile senior partner with a zinger of our own (no matter how witty) might get us fired.  Losing our cool before a judge isn’t smart.  Worse, some people just love drama.  They love when you fight fire with fire.  Not being patient will just reinforce the very behavior you find annoying.  That old adage about fighting fire with fire is totally wrong in most circumstances.”

Now:  I regret the way I wrote this.  It focuses the attention on the very thing we can’t control:  The other person.  Those other people may thrive on drama, like to push people, insist on having their way, and control people for their own thrills.  People may be hypercritical of others to make themselves feel better. These people may be our friends, coworkers, bosses, and other people we encounter daily.

That isn’t where the focus should be. As the Dalai Lama said, “Our enemies provide us with a precious opportunity to practice patience and love. We should have gratitude toward them.”  We can’t control what these folks do.  We can only choose how we react to them.  We should not let people steal our joy, ruin our day, and then hold hostility towards them because they have upset us.  An abusive boss seeks to destroy all thoughts of life but for the wishes of the abusive boss.  But that same boss cannot rob us of other joys of our life, such as friends and family, without our permission.

Of course, some forms of aggression should never be tolerated.   Being patient doesn’t mean being a doormat.  It does allow you to push back, but only to the extent necessary to protect yourself, lest you lose yourself and become the bully.

Then:  Set limits.  “As an example, I had a friend who would blow up my phone almost every night with drama. I told this person I would be putting my phone down at 9 p.m.  Of course, at precisely 8:59 p.m., came more drama texts.  I then reset the limit: I choose when I respond.  No one gets to choose for me.  It might be 8:50, or 8:30, or never.”

Now:  It’s still good to set limits with people.  Some people seek to use our time for drama, or for their own purposes.  Some seek to distract you from your goals, in favor of their own.  But it is more difficult to set limits with people than I originally envisioned.  This is especially true with people who employ you.  Or friends.  Or family.  People escalate when they don’t get what they want.  So, setting limits is easier said than done.  I still covet time for myself away from others, where there is no expectation set upon me from anyone.  That’s a bit of privilege speaking, as people working in Biglaw don’t have that option.  I sometimes regret the current pace of life where every email, every message, every intrusion demands instant attention.  Which is why I’ve been cutting back on media, and taking my nights as moments of seclusion.  It turns out people don’t cause drama when then can’t reach you.  But to the extent possible, it is good to have time where no one has the potential to disrupt your peace.

Then:  “Understand the triggers. Some people are very good at pushing buttons.  What do they get from doing so?  Power?  Attention?  It is vitally important that you rob them of their motivation.”

Now:   It is impossible to rob people of their motivations.  You can’t heal another person, and you might not know their motivations.  People will continue to play the same tune with which they are familiar (no matter how toxic), and there’s nothing you can do about that.  You can only change the role you play in their script.  Ultimately, you might choose to write yourself out of the script.

As an example, I have a visceral reaction to someone yelling at me.  It is a guaranteed way to assure I will ghost you (and in my darker days, far worse). I had a boss who yelled who I could not ghost.  So I applied for another job.  She got wind of it, because the job to which I had applied was her former place of employment.  Oops.  From this experience I learned that sometimes, every so often, people actually respond favorably if you are direct with them.  If it didn’t work out that way, I would have written myself out of her script of terror.

I guess my upshot from the past two years is that being patient is far more difficult than I believed. I was mistaking suppressing it for patience.  And I was being too much of a doormat.  Patience, it turns out, takes a lot of daily practice.

Now, some of you will read this and say, “It’s more complicated than that.”  Perhaps some might say, “Easier said than done.”   Both correct.  That’s the point.  In order to get to a point where we are patient requires a tremendous amount of… patience.

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LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. You can see more of his musings here. He is way funnier on social media, he claims. Please follow him on Twitter (@lawprofblawg) or Facebook. Email him at [email protected].