“People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” – Isaac Azimov
Do you know those people who decide the ‘truth’ of a situation is what is convenient for them? Then they decide to operate on the basis of that ‘knowledge’ even though you have told them half a dozen times they are wrong? And THEN they are peeved because things did not turn out the way they thought they should? That was my day yesterday. The person who took me on my errands thought the world was going to operate his way and I knew that was not the case. It drove me CRAZY.
When I was fully sighted I did not have to worry about putting up with other people’s foibles as much as I do now. I would take myself and just know damn well what the rules were. (I check ahead of time.)
Now it is often all I can do not to be critical or say “I told you so!” when things go amiss. Let me tell you, patience is a virtue I somehow think I lack!
I touched on patience before, talking about waiting for the clinical trials to get going, but that is a little different. I can curse them out at the top of my lungs but they are over 100 miles away. it is not wise to curse your driver out when you are 25 miles from home!
I found a couple of articles on how to be patient on the web. Jane Bolton writing for Psychology Today (9/2/11) suggested we be kind to ourselves and understand it is normal to want our own way. We want things done right (read ‘my way’) because in the not so distant past, wrong decisions on even simple things could mean death. She also suggested we suck it up and understand we can tolerate more discomfort than we thought. Bolton said we can use ‘pain’ to find other solutions and to help us understand ourselves. For example, why is this action driving me so crazy???? Finally she suggested we stop the self talk about how intolerable it all is and what an idiot the person doing things ‘wrong’ is. No sense adding fuel to the fire.
Z. Hereford writing for Essential Life Skills suggested we slow down and, essentially, smell the roses. She made some suggestions that sounded very much like mindfulness skills. They sounded very similar to ‘moment to pause’ and ‘being in the moment’. Those are mentioned on other pages.
So, here I am, 24 or so hours later, and I – barely ::grin:: – survived, but survive I did. I will probably be driven crazy again but hopefully I will be able to tolerate it some better. I am, like you, a work in progress.