Patience and understanding toward others is essential when you're onboarding new staff, or when you're delegating tasks. It's also a huge help in dealing with difficult co-workers or managers, and it's central to high-quality customer service.
This type of patience is active. Listening skills and empathy are vital, and, when you're dealing with difficult people , you need the self-awareness and emotional intelligence to understand how your words and actions affect the situation. You can't just wait it out and hope for the best.
2. Life Hardship Patience
We could use the term perseverance to sum up life hardship patience. It can mean having the patience to overcome a serious setback in life, like waiting long term for the outcome of a lawsuit, or for medical treatment. But it can also include your ability to work toward a long-term goal – whether it's professional, such as a promotion, or personal, like getting fit or saving for a vacation.
Whatever the obstacle you have to overcome, it will likely require determination and focus to achieve. And you will need to keep your emotions under control throughout the journey. These emotions can range from eagerness to get it done, to anger at the frustrations you encounter along the way – which can cause you to become demotivated.
Sometimes you need patience to deal with circumstances that are beyond your control. These are your "life hassles." Something as trivial as getting stuck in a traffic line, for instance, or waiting for a computer program to load.
You also need patience to get through those dull but unavoidable day-to-day tasks that don't necessarily contribute to your personal goals. The ability to maintain self-discipline, and give a job – no matter how mundane – the attention to detail it needs, is a hallmark of patience.
Research suggests that people who can stay calm in the face of these constant, petty frustrations are more likely to be more empathic, more equitable, and to suffer less from depression.
