I’m on week five of my two-year body recomposition journey, learning as much as I can to achieve my goal of packing on muscle and lowering excess fat before turning 40.
The more I learn about strength training and nutrition, the more I realize just how much impatience has contributed to a decade of yo-yoing between thinness and obesity.
At 19, it became the most important thing in the world to weigh a certain amount by the summer, so I found myself locking in on January 1st—severely restricting my daily calories to drop weight as fast as possible.
If I could just hold on until the fall, then I would let myself eat as much as I wanted—and I did every single year until I turned 24.
Unfortunately, that fast track journey to thinness taught my nervous system that starvation is in fact a real threat.
My starting weight would increase little by little each cycle, but I would just go harder with the cardio and cut more calories.
It had never occurred to me to play it slow and sustainably. However, the consequences of these weight loss speed runs finally caught up with me during my first pregnancy.
Not only was my brain looking out for me, it was also trying to oversee the construction of a whole other person as well.
I ate, and ate, and ate some more—landing myself well within the obesity range for the first time ever.
After weaning my daughter, I dropped my calories well below the recommended floor. I just didn’t have the time or patience to build sustainable habits.
At this point, I’m sure you can guess how my other pregnancies and postpartum periods went.
After my last baby, I cut myself down to the smallest weight I’d been since meeting my husband.
Unsurprisingly, this victory was short-lived.
Covid-19 hit along with crippling depression, and three years later I found myself not too far from 300 pounds.
That’s when I realized I’d been going about things all wrong. I finally tapped in a medical professional who put me on a more scenic route to weight loss. I lost 90 pounds over the course of two years and kept most of it off.
Being patient paid off, and now I’m on a lifelong journey of building healthier eating habits and a strength training routine.
No more crash dieting. No more body makeover challenges. Just time and learning to love the process.
With two-and-a-half months until summer, I’ve already accepted that this will not be the year I squeeze myself into the strappy bathing suit I bought myself six years ago.
“But we’ve done this before. Just cut down your calories until the summer,” my inner self nags.
Nope. I’ve decided I’m going to make a long-term investment in my health and mobility instead.
Seeing the connection between patience and success in my own self-improvement journey made me think about all the resolutions that were made a few months ago. Odds are pretty good that a number of people are dealing with the weight of a “failure” for not having lived up to “new year, new me.”
Listen to this song for a reminder to persevere through challenges.
Is there a long-term investment you’d like to make in your own life? Maybe you want financial freedom, a decluttered home, or a new car.
Of course, we would all love to get rich quick or instantly transform our home to a minimalistic haven fit for a magazine, and the idea of driving off the lot immersed in the smell of a brand new car TODAY can make buying now and paying later seem like the only logical option.
Despite our tendency toward instant gratification, we’re more likely to maintain true satisfaction with our lifestyle investments if we’re willing to put more time and care into the process.
Understanding why patience is important starts here—it helps us set realistic goals and avoid the hidden traps that come with focusing on now instead of the long-term picture. It’s the key to achieving and maintaining lifelong physical and emotional health.
What Is Patience, Really?
In order to benefit from patience, we first need to know what it is.
Generally speaking, patience is the ability to wait calmly even when it isn’t easy to do so. It’s being able to wait in a traffic jam without melting down or giving someone space to calm down before responding in tense situations.
Being patient also means being willing to forego immediate gratification for a long-term payoff. It’s choosing to save before buying that brand-new car or spending months—even years—mastering healthy eating and movement habits instead of crash dieting down to a goal weight.
These situations all require self-control—a trait closely linked to patience but not interchangeable.
We exercise self-control when we manage our impulses despite feeling angry or frustrated about a situation or circumstance. We’re patient when we maintain control over our thoughts and actions and tolerate inconveniences or hardships without becoming provoked or resigned to failure.
Researchers and psychologists have categorized three types of patience: interpersonal, life hardship, and daily hassles.
Interpersonal patience has less to do with waiting and more to do with how we handle difficult social situations. Being patient with others means showing empathy when their behaviors fall short of our expectations.
We aren’t perfect, so we know that at times we are going to inconvenience or annoy someone ourselves.
Keeping in mind that we wouldn’t want someone to berate us or assume bad intentions during our imperfect moments can help us remain calm when others make mistakes or display negative behaviors.
Life hardship patience means enduring challenging situations without losing hope or becoming defeated. It can help us keep a positive attitude in the face of chronic health problems, unemployment, financial hardship, or setbacks.
Daily hassle patience is what keeps us calm when we encounter everyday frustrations and circumstances beyond our control like traffic jams or tech problems.
True, these types of patience don’t come easy to many of us, but making an effort to practice them can contribute to our physical and emotional wellness.
How Patience Affects Your Physical Health
Patience contributes to our physical wellness by keeping our nervous system at a calm baseline when life inevitably throws a curveball.
Last month I’d been dealing with a lot of pent-up stress.
I’d fallen back into my bad habit of doomscrolling, and I hadn’t realized how much the ten year anniversary of my ectopic pregnancy had been weighing on me.
This made me incredibly short-tempered—especially in traffic.
Every inconsiderate maneuver felt personal.
Even minor delays sent me into a rage, and my fitness tracker kept the score.
A five minute car ride often resulted in numerous abnormal heart rate alerts. That made me realize that my patience in every sense of the word needed immediate attention.
My reaction to every slight and inconvenience constantly sent my nervous system into a state of fight-or-flight—flooding my body with cortisol and adrenaline.
These hormones play a vital role in surviving life-threatening situations, but they create problems for us when they remain in our system for extended periods of time.
High levels of cortisol and adrenaline can lead to hypertension, high blood sugar, and weight management issues.
Patience, on the other hand, signals to our brain that our body is safe and helps regulate the amount of cortisol and adrenaline in our system.
Mindfulness techniques like breathing exercises, grounding statements, and sensory tasks can help us avoid ruminating on thoughts that fuel fight-or-flight responses.
Box breathing, for example, requires us to focus on a breathing pattern that consists of a four-second inhale, four-second hold, four-second exhale, and another four-second hold.
I don’t know about you, but I’m terrible at multitasking.
I can’t imagine being able to keep the rhythm of my breath while simultaneously conjuring up colorful insults for the driver who cut in front of me.
We don’t have to wait for moments of frustration to practice mindfulness.
In fact, part of the reason I struggled with patience last month is because I’d let my mindfulness routine fall by the wayside.
It had been part of my morning brain work routine, but I’d allowed it to be crowded out by other things.
In preparation for this month’s theme, I’ve been working through the book Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal. One of the willpower experiments challenged me to practice mindful breathing and spend 5-minutes every day engaged in some sort of outdoor activity.
This exercise encouraged me to make mindfulness a non-negotiable part of my day, and it has definitely helped me be more patient and calm in frustrating situations.
The abnormal heart alerts I’d been getting non-stop have become rare occurrences again.
My sleep has improved, and the tension in my back is gone for the most part.
Mindfulness and patience go hand in hand. Practicing both daily can help us save those stress hormones for times of actual danger.
How Patience Protects Your Mental Health
As we’ve explored in past posts, the state of our nervous system impacts our ability to think and regulate our emotions.
Patience keeps our body at a calm baseline. This gives our brain the bandwidth needed to think deeply and regulate our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. We need this more than ever as we tread the tumultuous waters of a world saturated with war, corruption, and economic instability.
Having recently pulled myself out of ANOTHER doomscrolling cycle, I know how easy it is to become enraged by the things being reported in the news.
In fact, I half-jokingly remarked to my husband that if we lived in the Independence Day timeline I would’ve been standing on top of that building with a sign that said, “Thank you for putting us out of our misery!”
I’d lost all patience with my own species, and it heavily influenced how I felt about my interactions with people outside of my home.
Still, my anger and cynicism were doing nothing for me or anyone else around me.
Truth be told, it was making me unpleasant to be around, and that’s when I realized I needed to refocus on my healing and immerse myself in this theme of patience.
Realistically, the world scene is unlikely to improve any time soon.
Practicing patience now can give us the mental clarity needed to prepare for future emergencies and stay calm in the face of personal trials—instead of giving in to hopelessness and despair.
Research supports the important role that patience plays in maintaining our mental health.
For instance, a study published in 2024 found that patient people experienced less anxiety and negative emotions when waiting for uncertain and potentially life-altering news.
Patience also helps us wait for a long-term payoff when it comes to achieving our goals.
Not only have I had to learn this in regard to my health journey, I’ve had to learn to be patient with my blog as well.
I’m entering my fifth month of blogging, and as a new content creator my data is a rollercoaster.
Some weeks my site gets a few visitors every day, while other weeks are radio silent.
I would be lying if I said I haven’t been tempted to give up because things weren’t moving along as fast as I’d hoped.
However, my friend recently showed me the importance of patiently trusting the process and learning to enjoy the journey along the way.
She’s been steadily working on her corner of the internet for a year-and-a-half and has recently seen a sudden uptick in subscribers.
Her favorite motto the entire time: if you build it, they will come.
She didn’t place any expectations on when it would happen.
She focused on her confidence that it would happen, and that helped her stay the course.
Practicing patience helps us persevere through challenges and keep taking steps that get us closer to life satisfaction. It plays a key role in our overall health and happiness.
Next Steps for Your Self-Discovery Journey
If you’d like to join me in making patience a daily practice this month, here are some resources to help you get started.
Subscribe to receive your free Patience Readiness Toolkit, designed to help you explore this month’s theme at your own pace.
Gentle Ways to Apply This:
- Examine the differences between patience and self-control to help you respond to life’s challenges with resilience. This free printable, Patience v. Self-Control, includes a quick reference guide that breaks down the meaning, feelings, and challenges behind each virtue.
- Notice how impatience shows up in your body. Use this free gentle worksheet, Impatience and Your Health, to help you take one realistic step toward feeling better.
- Identify where impatience is quietly undermining your progress. This free Is Impatience Sabotaging Your Goals? printable helps you build a patience-based plan to stay the course.
Reading Recommendation
- Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal
Additional Inspiration:
Patience Is a Mindset, Not a Reaction
Patience supports a healthy nervous system, emotional health, and mental clarity, but it isn’t as simple as waiting quietly or maintaining our composure in challenging situations.
It’s a mindset, not a reaction.
Like a muscle, patience can help us do difficult things without wearing out easily under tension and stress—but only if we consistently put in the work to build and maintain it over time.
It’s a quality that will help us choose love and kindness in a world that favors hatred, find joy even when things feel uncertain, and maintain our inner peace.
If this post resonates with you, please share it with anyone who is going through a difficult season or needs encouragement to pursue their goals with patience.
Do you have a long-term goal that you’re working on? If so, what helps you work on it patiently without giving up?
Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. If you’d like to receive an email notification when the next post goes live, you can subscribe using the form below. Next week we’ll explore the role patience plays in your emotional, physical, and financial wellness.
Keep it kind, respectful, and focused on self-love and growth—let’s make this a safe, uplifting space. 🌿