Embracing Patience

(bright music) Headspace Studios. (gentle music) Hey there everyone, it's Kessonga here, and welcome to Radio Headspace. It's a terrific Tuesday, or is it? (laughs) Well, yes, it's still terrific, but have you ever had one of those weeks where the days just seem to be moving like molasses? This is one of those weeks for me. When this happens, I notice there's a sense of anxiety that tends to build up inside of me, and I know it's because I want things to move along quickly. I want the days to go by faster, especially because they already feel like they are. It's in these moments where I have to really remember the mindfulness concept of patience. Let's talk about how else it showed up for me in my life recently. So yesterday I mentioned that I went on a week long silent retreat at a meditation center in California called Big Bear. Now, as I've stated, I've attended silent retreats before, and one thing that I love about the retreat is the schedule. With silent retreats, there's usually a very clear cut schedule to follow, and this one was no different. Usually the day gets started pretty early with a sitting meditation between 6:00 or 7:00 AM. Followed by a walking meditation, and then we have breakfast. There's usually a dharma talk that occurs where the teacher discusses an aspect of Buddhist philosophy, and then later on, there are some more rounds of formal meditation. I know, it's a lot. As you can probably guess, at some point during the retreat week, impatience decided to join the party, and it showed up at different points on different days. So I remember there was one morning during the sitting meditation when impatience decided to pay me a visit, and he was real slick and sneaky about it. (chuckles) He actually disguised himself in the form of hunger. I was in my dignified posture of awareness, focusing on my breath, breathing in, breathing out, when out of nowhere I became super hungry. All I could do was think about the breakfast that was coming in about 30 minutes. I can imagine that impatience was laughing his head off in the background, but I was able to notice how I was practicing impatience and to switch gears a bit, consistently noticing the pull at my attention, and then bringing my focus back to my focal point. There was another moment I remember, I was eagerly anticipating the end of the sitting meditation because I wanted to make my way to the labyrinth for the walking meditation. Again, I had to bring awareness to the impatience I was exhibiting during my practice. I also wanna mention how mindfulness and meditation enhances stress resiliency. I know I probably mention this every episode, (chuckles) but it's only because this is how it has helped me most in my personal life. By increasing my stress resiliency, which is basically my ability to cope with and...