How to Overcome Impatience

Kathryn Atkins
2 min readAug 4, 2024
Photo by Zach Shup on Unsplash

Author’s Note: THIS STORY IS COPY-PASTED FROM MY BLOG, published June 3, 2021.

I was going to write about something else today, but I had a Headspace meditation this morning that showed a ray of sunlight into working on my impatience (my only flaw, haha), which tries to hide around my persona like a cockroach under the kitchen sink.

How do you overcome impatience? Let’s chat.

You: “Wait. What’s that? Overcoming impatience? I want to know how. And make it quick!”
Me: “Hah. You wear the impatience mantle, too, I see.”
You, nodding quickly: “So, what did Andy Puddicome say? He’s the Headspace guy, right?”
Me: “Yes. That’s correct. I’m paraphrasing, but what I got out of it was the following. Impatience stems from the difference between what we’re expecting and what is really happening.”
You: “Yeah, I see that.”
Me: “Wait. That’s not all.”
You: “Okay. Hurry up, though, please, I have things I gotta do.”
Me: “Well, the next thing is that somehow, in our hurry-up world, we manage to blame someone else for the dissonance. As in, whoever is around is causing you to feel impatient because they’re not moving fast enough, talking fast enough, accomplishing enough, and so on.”
You: “So?”
Me: “So, Andy says that the one to ‘blame’ is ourselves, and we need to try to understand at that moment that we have control over how we choose to feel. That realization on…

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Kathryn Atkins

Author, poet, business writer, pianist, flamenco dancer, altMBA grad, Berkeley MBA. I like yoga, reading, traveling, family, friends, and dogs.